What Time Can You Legally Call? TCPA Hours & State Quiet-Hour Rules
The federal TCPA 8am–9pm window is only the floor. Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon, Connecticut, and Texas enforce narrower quiet hours — and three states cap how often you can dial the same number. The 2026 rules in one table, and how to stay inside them.
The federal floor: 8am–9pm, in the called party's time
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act's implementing rules (47 CFR §64.1200) prohibit telemarketing calls before 8am or after 9pm — measured in the called party's local time, not yours. That last clause is what makes compliance an engineering problem rather than a policy memo: a campaign dialed from New York at 6pm is calling California at 3pm and Hawaii at noon, and a list sorted by upload order will happily dial a Honolulu number at 4am Eastern.
The federal window is also just the floor. States are free to be stricter, and a growing number are.
States with narrower windows in 2026
Five states currently enforce calling windows narrower than the federal 8am–9pm — all evaluated in the called party's local time:
| State | Calling window | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Florida | 8am – 8pm | FTSA, Fla. Stat. §501.059 |
| Oklahoma | 8am – 8pm | Okla. Stat. tit. 15 §§775C.1–775C.6 |
| Oregon | 8am – 8pm | HB 3865 (effective Jan 1, 2026) |
| Connecticut | 9am – 8pm | Conn. Gen. Stat. §42-288a |
| Texas | 9am – 9pm Mon–Sat, noon – 9pm Sun | Tex. Bus. & Com. Code ch. 301 |
| All other states | 8am – 9pm (federal floor) | 47 CFR §64.1200 |
Texas is the one to notice: it's the only state with a day-dependent window, and the Sunday noon start catches campaigns that treat all days alike. Oregon is the newest arrival — its 8pm cutoff took effect January 1, 2026, and more state legislatures have similar "mini-TCPA" bills in progress. A rules table you hard-coded in 2024 is already wrong.
One common misconception worth flagging: Maryland is often listed with the 8pm states, but its Telephone Solicitations Act window actually matches the federal 8am–9pm. (Nothing stops a caller from applying an earlier cutoff there anyway — being stricter than the statute is never a violation.)
Frequency caps: the other quiet-hour rule
Three of those states also cap how often you can dial the same person. Florida's FTSA and Oklahoma's Telephone Solicitation Act limit telephonic sales calls to 3 attempts per 24 hours to the same number on the same subject, and Oregon adopted the same cap effective January 1, 2026. These laws carry private rights of action — in Florida's case, $500 to $1,500 per violating call.
Because the cap keeps spreading state to state, the simplest defensible design is to enforce the strictest version everywhere: no more than 3 attempts to any number in any rolling 24-hour window, regardless of state. That also removes a whole class of area-code-to-state edge cases from the hot path.
The timezone problem nobody budgets for
"The called party's local time" sounds simple until you try to compute it. Area codes are the only timezone signal most dialers have, and they are an imperfect one:
- Overlays keep appearing. New area codes are added every year (Florida alone added several in the last two years). A static lookup table silently misclassifies every number in an overlay it doesn't know.
- States straddle timezones. Texas, Florida, Oregon, and a dozen others span two zones; the area code narrows it down but doesn't always decide it.
- Ported and mobile numbers travel. The area code tells you where the number was issued, not where its owner is standing.
The fail-closed rule: when the system cannot resolve a number's timezone, the safe behavior is to assume the most restrictive plausible window and hold the call — not to shrug and dial. A number your dialer can't place shouldn't be a number your dialer calls at what might be 7am.
What this looks like when a platform enforces it
Vosy enforces all of the above in the dial path itself — the checks run on every outbound call, before the carrier is asked to place it:
Every NANP area code — including recent overlays — maps to the called party's local zone, refreshed as new codes are assigned.
The federal 8am–9pm floor always applies; numbers in Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon, Connecticut, and Texas get their state's narrower window, including Texas's Sunday rule — and Maryland numbers get a deliberately conservative 8pm cutoff, an hour tighter than the statute requires.
If a number's timezone can't be resolved, the call is held to a conservative window rather than dialed on a guess.
Campaign dialing enforces the 3-attempts-per-rolling-24-hours cap for every number, not just numbers in the states that require it today.
None of this depends on the agent's prompt, the campaign author remembering a rule, or a spreadsheet being current. That's the meaningful distinction when you evaluate calling platforms: ask where the calling-hour rule lives. If the answer is "you can configure it," the compliance burden is still yours. More on how AI voice agents work →
Frequently asked questions
What hours can telemarketing calls legally be made? expand_more
Under the federal TCPA rules (47 CFR §64.1200), telemarketing calls may only be placed between 8am and 9pm in the called party's local time. Several states narrow that window further — Florida, Oklahoma, and Oregon end at 8pm, Connecticut runs 9am–8pm, and Texas allows 9am–9pm Monday–Saturday but only noon–9pm on Sunday.
Whose timezone applies to calling-hour rules — mine or the customer's? expand_more
The called party's local time, not yours. That makes timezone resolution a real engineering problem: area codes don't map cleanly to timezones (overlays, ported numbers, states split across zones), so a compliant dialer resolves the called party's timezone per number and refuses to dial when it can't resolve one.
How many times can I call the same number in one day? expand_more
Florida (FTSA) and Oklahoma cap telephonic sales calls at 3 per 24 hours to the same person on the same subject, and Oregon adopted the same cap effective January 1, 2026. Because more states keep adopting this, the safest posture is enforcing the strictest cap — 3 attempts per rolling 24 hours — everywhere.
What are the penalties for calling outside legal hours? expand_more
The TCPA carries a private right of action at $500 per violation, trebled to $1,500 for willful violations — per call. State mini-TCPAs like Florida's FTSA add their own private rights of action at similar amounts. Quiet-hour violations are among the easiest claims to bring because call logs prove them.
Do calling-hour rules apply to AI voice agent calls? expand_more
Yes. Calling-hour rules attach to the call, not to who (or what) is speaking. An outbound call placed by an AI voice agent is subject to the same federal and state windows as a human telemarketer — and because AI platforms dial at scale, a misconfigured campaign can generate thousands of violations in an afternoon.
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Get Started FreeThis guide is general information about United States calling regulations, current as of the date above. It is not legal advice, and calling laws change frequently — consult a qualified attorney about your specific calling program.