Yes, you can drive at night with a permit in Maine. No curfew for permit holders. Maine requires 10 supervised night hours as part of the highest total hour requirement in the country: 70 hours. No other state comes close. Vermont is next at 40.

Those 70 hours over a 6-month hold period work out to nearly 3 hours of supervised driving per week, every week, for six months. It’s a real commitment.

When Does “Night” Start in Maine?

Maine uses sunset to sunrise. No fixed clock. When the sun drops below the horizon, night begins.

In Portland, sunset is around 4:05 PM in December, the earliest in the continental US for a major city at Maine’s latitude. By late June it’s not until 8:25 PM. That’s a 4-hour-plus difference depending on the time of year.

Maine’s winters are long and the days are short. A 4:30 PM drive in January is solidly night. That also means Maine families who start permit practice in fall have a natural advantage: nearly every after-school or evening drive from October through February will land after sunset.

If you’re logging on paper, you’d need to look up the exact sunset time for your town before each session. Sunset in Bangor and sunset in Kittery aren’t the same time. The difference is small (about 10 minutes) but it matters if you’re trying to count a session that started right around sunset.

Curfew Rules

Maine has no curfew for permit holders. Any hour is legal to drive as long as a licensed supervisor who’s at least 20 years old is in the car.

The age-20 supervisor minimum is notably lower than most states, which require 21. In Maine, a 20-year-old older sibling or young parent legally qualifies to supervise. Worth knowing if you’re sorting out who can ride along.

Curfew restrictions in Maine apply to junior operators (the license level after the permit), not to permit-stage drivers.

Getting Your 10 Night Hours Done

Out of 70 total hours, 10 at night is a relatively small slice, about 14%. But the 70-hour total is where the real pressure is.

At 3 hours of driving per week, you’d finish in just over 23 weeks. That’s cutting it close on a 26-week (6-month) hold. Most families aim for 3.5 to 4 hours per week so they’re not scrambling in the final weeks.

For night hours specifically:

One night session per week of 30–45 minutes gets you to 10 hours in about 3 months. That’s front-loaded enough that you’re not chasing night hours at the end.
Maine winters do a lot of the work. In December, sunset before 4 PM means even a late-afternoon drive after school qualifies. You can accumulate night hours without ever going out after dinner.
Don’t conflate “dark enough” with “after sunset.” Maine’s night definition is the actual astronomical sunset, not when it gets dim. A heavy overcast afternoon might feel like night at 3:30 PM, but your night hour clock doesn’t start until the sun officially sets.

Maine Permit Requirements

Requirement	Details
Total supervised hours	70
Night hours	10
Night definition	Sunset to sunrise
Permit curfew	None
Minimum permit age	15
Permit hold period	6 months
Supervisor minimum age	20
Driver’s ed required	Yes

Practical Tips

Treat 70 hours like a job. It’s not 70 casual drives. It’s a structured practice schedule across six months. Families who don’t plan ahead often get to month five and realize they’re 25 hours short. Block time on the calendar from the first week.

Maine’s roads are not forgiving in winter. Snow, ice, black ice, salt spray reducing visibility — these are real Maine winter driving conditions. Logging night hours during winter also means exposure to winter conditions, which is exactly what you want before your teen drives alone. Night + snow on a rural highway is a high-stakes combination. Practice it supervised.

The 70-hour requirement is Maine’s answer to a real problem. Maine is rural. Roads are less predictable. Emergency response times are longer outside of Portland and Bangor. The state’s philosophy is more practice hours equal lower crash rates. The data backs that up: graduated licensing programs with higher hour requirements show measurably lower first-year crash rates.

Log every single session. At 70 hours, you can’t afford gaps. A session you forget to log is a session that doesn’t count. Maine requires a driving log at the road test.

Moda tracks your hours automatically, checks sunset against your GPS coordinates, and separates day and night totals for you.

For full Maine permit requirements, see our Maine permit hours guide.

Download: Moda on the App Store

Stop manually tracking hours. Moda logs driving automatically.

Auto-detects night driving, exports DMV forms, and syncs across family phones.