Astronomical Islamic Prayer Times & Qibla Direction Calculator

Prayer Times Calculator 2026: Accurate Salah Times for Your Exact City

The five daily prayers are anchored to the sun, not the clock — and the sun does not care about your schedule. Fajr begins at true dawn, when the first horizontal light spreads across the horizon; Dhuhr starts the moment the sun passes its peak; Asr when shadows lengthen; Maghrib at sunset; Isha when the last twilight disappears. Because these are astronomical events, prayer times shift every single day and differ between cities just 50 kilometers apart. A prayer times calculator does the celestial math for your exact location so you are never guessing from a printed timetable that was made for another city.

What surprises most people: there is no single "correct" calculation method. The Muslim World League, ISNA (North America), the Egyptian General Authority, Karachi's University of Islamic Sciences, and others each define dawn and dusk at slightly different solar angles — typically 15 to 19.5 degrees below the horizon. That is why Fajr in the same city can differ by 15–20 minutes between two apps. None of them is wrong; they are different scholarly conventions. The calculator lets you pick your preferred method (or your local mosque's), and it also handles the Asr difference: the Shafi'i/Maliki/Hanbali standard versus the Hanafi standard, which starts Asr later.

High latitudes are where calculators earn their keep. In London in December, the sun barely climbs, and the gap between Maghrib and Isha shrinks dramatically; in June, twilight never fully disappears, so some methods cannot compute Isha at all. Good calculators handle this with angle-based, nearest-day, or nearest-latitude adjustments rather than showing blank times. If you live above 48 degrees latitude — the UK, Canada, Scandinavia — always check which high-latitude rule your calculator uses, and compare against your local mosque for a week before trusting it blindly.

Beyond the five prayers, the calculator usually shows sunrise (Shurūq) — the time when Fajr ends and voluntary prayers pause until the sun rises fully — plus the last third of the night for Tahajjud, which many people specifically seek out during Ramadan. Speaking of Ramadan: prayer times become daily essentials rather than background info, because Suhoor must end before Fajr and Iftar begins at Maghrib. A one-minute error at either end matters during fasting, which is why serious users cross-check the calculator against their mosque's Ramadan timetable and note which calculation method matches.

A practical note on precision. The calculator derives times from your city's coordinates using established astronomical formulas — accurate to about a minute for most locations. But "your city" can span 30 kilometers, and prayer times shift roughly one minute per 15–20 kilometers east or west. If you want exactness, use a calculator that accepts GPS coordinates instead of just a city name. And remember the human factor: mosques often add a few minutes of precaution (ihtiyat) to Fajr and Maghrib. The calculator gives you the astronomical truth; your local mosque gives you the community practice. Know both, follow your scholars.