Quiet hours reference
Federal quiet hours run 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the recipient's local time. That sounds like a thirteen-hour window, but only a list in a single time zone gets all thirteen hours. Once your list crosses a time zone, the window gets shorter at both ends, and a single send to the whole contiguous United States at once has ten hours, not thirteen. This page works out the window for the time zones you actually text.
Check the time zones your contact list reaches, then choose the time zone you schedule in.
11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern
A ten-hour window.
No person or entity shall initiate any telephone solicitation to any residential telephone subscriber before the hour of 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. (local time at the called party's location). 47 CFR 64.1200(c)(1)
Two phrases in that sentence matter most. Local time at the called party's location means the time that counts is the recipient's local time, not the time in your office or on the server. Second, telephone solicitation is a defined legal term, not a word for any message: the same section defines it as a call or message made to encourage a purchase, rental or investment, and excludes contact made with the recipient's prior express invitation or permission, contact within an established business relationship, and contact by a tax-exempt nonprofit.
The FCC (the Federal Communications Commission) treats a text message as a call under the TCPA (the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act), which is why the quiet-hours window is the working baseline for texting and not only a rule for phone calls.
Because quiet hours attach to a telephone solicitation, and because that definition excludes contact made with prior express invitation or permission, there is a real argument that a marketing text sent to someone who opted in is outside the rule entirely. The Ecommerce Innovation Alliance asked the FCC to say so. The Commission released a Public Notice seeking comment on 11 March 2025, the comment period closed, and no declaratory ruling (a formal FCC decision on the question) has issued.
This means nobody knows the answer yet. In the meantime, class actions over quiet hours and marketing texts have become a real and growing category of lawsuits. We will not tell you the looser reading is safe while the question is still before the agency that would decide it. Treat 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time as the baseline, and treat anything looser as a decision your counsel makes rather than one your texting platform makes for you.
Every window below assumes daylight saving time and is shown in Eastern time, because a send window is a single span of clock time and has to be stated in one time zone to be useful. The window opens when the westernmost recipient reaches 8 a.m. and closes when the easternmost recipient reaches 9 p.m.
| List reaches | Window, Eastern | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| One zone only | 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local | 13 |
| Eastern and Central | 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. | 12 |
| Eastern, Central, Mountain | 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. | 11 |
| Contiguous United States | 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. | 10 |
| Contiguous plus Alaska | 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. | 9 |
| All fifty states | 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. | 7 |
The last row surprises most people. A list covering all fifty states has only a seven-hour window for sending to everyone at once, and it does not open until the afternoon on the East Coast. If that does not work for you, do not send anyway. Split the send by time zone so each group receives it at a sensible local hour, which is what scheduling by recipient time zone is for.
Several states contain two time zones. Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon and Idaho all split, and sources disagree on the exact count because it depends on how you treat small slivers and daylight saving. The exact count matters less than the fact that two contacts with the same state on file can be an hour apart, so a send scheduled by state is based on the wrong information.
The rule is based on the called party's location. The closest substitute most lists have is the area code, but the reliable approach is to store a time zone on each contact record when you collect the number, rather than guessing it later.
Arizona and Hawaii do not observe daylight saving time. For most of the year Arizona keeps Mountain standard time while the rest of the Mountain zone moves its clocks forward, which puts Arizona on the same clock as the Pacific zone from March to November and back with Mountain for the winter. Hawaii sits five hours behind Eastern in winter and six behind in summer.
The practical consequence is that a send window calculated in July is wrong in December. A list spanning all fifty states has a seven-hour window under daylight saving and an eight-hour window under standard time. Any schedule you set once and never revisit will be wrong twice a year.
Quiet hours on every message
Quiet hours are enforced for each recipient rather than for each campaign, so a list spanning four time zones goes out in four waves without you having to build four campaigns. You start with 100 free SMS, and your number is $5 a month.
The recipient's time zone counts, because the rule says local time at the called party's location. Scheduling a 9 a.m. send from an Eastern office reaches a Pacific recipient at 6 a.m., which is inside quiet hours no matter what your own clock said when you pressed send.
Possibly, but the answer is not a clear yes. The exclusion for prior express invitation or permission is real and it is exactly what the Ecommerce Innovation Alliance asked the FCC to confirm, but the FCC has not answered and courts have gone both ways. Follow the 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. baseline unless your counsel tells you otherwise in writing.
Quiet hours attach to a telephone solicitation, which is defined around encouraging a purchase. A pure appointment reminder or a delivery notification is not a solicitation. The risk is a message that starts as a transactional notice and ends with an offer, because a marketing line at the bottom can bring the whole message back under the definition.
Some states are stricter, and this page does not list them. State telemarketing statutes vary, they are amended often, and a stale table on a compliance page is worse than no table. Check the states you actually text, and treat the federal window as a floor rather than a ceiling.
This page is not legal advice. It gives you the arithmetic, the rule text, and an honest account of what is still open. The compliance decision is yours and your counsel's.
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