Why are the timings given by your Prayer Times service (Mobile/PC and Online) different from my local mosque?

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Why are the timings given by your Prayer Times service (Mobile/PC and Online) different from my local mosque?

Assalamu Alaikum,

If the difference you find in prayer times is more than 30 minutes or so, please ensure that you have tried changing the Prayer calculation method/Daylight Savings settings and/or the longitude/latitude data used by us for your city. Normally it is the Prayer Calculation method that differs between two sources and can cause some difference in Fajr and Isha timings.

However if the difference is less than a few minutes between our generated timings and the ones you have with you, then please read on.

First of all we should mention that normally the difference found between various sources is only that of a few minutes and not more. One or two minutes here and there is not a big difference at all. The fact of the matter is that there is no timing or calculation method that one can say is absolutely 100% correct! The reason for this is that there is so much detail involved in calculating prayer timings that even the most powerful computer will have an error rate of a couple of minutes.

There are in fact a number of scientific papers out there that talk about prayer time calculation and mention how difficult it is to calculate using computers as manual observation is necessary in deciding whether it's time for prayer. Moreover, these papers suggest that adding 'safety minutes' to calculated time is in fact safer and better because then one can be sure that they're not praying before the time of actual prayer (such as before zawwal) and therefor doing a grave sin. For this reason our algorithm adds a minute to make sure this does not happen.

Furthermore, some websites have been providing prayer times for several years and thus have gained trust with its users that their data is in fact most accurate. Due to this, a lot of mosques and cities and countries actually have adopted their timings and think that these are 100% correct. The fact of the matter is that their timing too are as prone to error as any other calculation. In fact, for certain countries and cities with a higher altitude, these timings can at times be completely wrong. A point to note is that the standard timings followed by Mecca are different from that which these websites provide (and similarly will be different from what we provide). This however does not mean that Mecca is doing the wrong thing or that we are wrong - these timings are only there to help us determine what the correct time of prayer is, neither too early, nor too late. So our advice to you is to not worry about a few minutes here and there as every single algorithm will vary slightly.

Rest assured that the algorithm we use is authentic and provided by the only authority in Saudi Arabia (a derivation of this algorithm is used by many organizations, slightly modified to suite their needs).

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