Time Zone Converter & Meeting Planner

A time zone converter shows what time it is in other cities for any date and time you choose. Our free converter and meeting planner lets you add up to 12 cities or time zones, enter a time in one of them and instantly see the local time, date, UTC offset and daylight saving status in all the others. A 24-hour grid highlights everyone's working hours so you can spot the best time for a call at a glance, and a share link opens the same comparison for your colleagues. It uses the time zone database built into your browser, so clock changes are handled for any date.

How to use the Time zone converter

1. 1 Add your citiesType a city or time zone name, such as Sydney, Mumbai or America/Chicago, and press Add. Your own time zone is added first automatically.
2. 2 Pick a date and timeEnter the date and time in the base zone, the first card in the list. Use the current time button to start from now, or make any other city the base.
3. 3 Read the local timesEach card shows the local time and date, the UTC offset, the time zone abbreviation where one exists, whether daylight saving applies and the difference from the base zone.
4. 4 Find a meeting slotLook at the meeting planner grid. Green cells are working hours, pale cells are early or late, and grey cells are night. A tick above a column means everyone is in working hours.
5. 5 Share the resultClick a column to pick that hour, then copy the share link or the list of times and paste it into an invitation or chat.

How time zones and UTC offsets work

Every time zone is defined by its offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the world's reference time. New York in winter is UTC−05:00, so when it is 12:00 UTC it is 07:00 in New York. Tokyo is UTC+09:00 all year, so the same moment is 21:00 there. To convert between two zones you work out the difference between their offsets, which the converter shows on every card.

Not every offset is a whole number of hours. India uses UTC+05:30, Nepal UTC+05:45, parts of Australia UTC+09:30 and Newfoundland UTC−03:30 in winter. These zones trip up mental arithmetic and some calendar tools, but the converter handles them exactly and shows half-hour and quarter-hour times in the planner grid.

Time zones are political as well as geographical. Large countries can span several zones, such as the USA, Canada, Russia, Australia and Brazil, while China uses a single zone across a very wide area. Governments also change their rules from time to time, which is why this tool relies on the regularly updated database in your browser rather than a fixed table.

Daylight saving time and why it causes mistakes

Many countries move their clocks forward by an hour in spring and back in autumn, but they do not all do it on the same day. The USA and Canada usually change on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. The UK and the EU change on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October. Australia, New Zealand, Chile and other southern hemisphere countries change in the opposite direction, and much of Asia, Africa and South America does not use daylight saving at all.

This means the gap between two cities can change several times a year. London and New York are usually five hours apart, but for a few weeks in March and in late October or early November the gap is four hours. Sydney and London can be nine, ten or eleven hours apart depending on the month. If you book a regular meeting using a fixed difference, it will be an hour out for part of the year.

The converter looks up the rules for the exact date you enter, so a call planned for next April shows the right times even if the clocks change before then. Each card says whether that zone is on daylight saving time, standard time or does not use daylight saving.

Planning meetings across time zones

The meeting planner shows the 24 hours of your chosen day in the base zone, with a row for each city. Cells inside the working hours you set are green, the two hours either side are pale, and night-time hours are grey. The number above each column counts how many locations are in working hours at that time, and a tick means everyone is.

If no hour suits everyone, the summary tells you the best overlap and how many locations it covers. For teams spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas there is often no slot inside normal office hours for all three, so someone will have an early start or a late finish. Rotating the inconvenient slot between regions is fairer than always asking the same people to join at 7am or 10pm.

• Set realistic working hours: if your colleagues start at 8:30, set the start time to 8:00 or 9:00 rather than assuming 9 to 5.
• Watch the date: a Monday morning call from the Americas is already Monday evening or Tuesday in Asia and Australia, and the cards flag the next or previous day.
• Avoid clock change weeks for important events, or recheck the times in the planner for that exact date.
• Send times in the attendees' own zones, or use the share link, rather than writing only your local time in the invitation.

Sharing a time with your team

Copy share link creates a web address containing the date, time, cities and working hours you have chosen. Anyone who opens it sees the same comparison, already converted into each city, without having to set anything up. It is a simple way to propose a time in an email, a chat message or a project brief.

Copy times creates a plain-text list of every city with its local time, date and UTC offset, followed by the link. This is useful for calendar descriptions and event pages, where readers may not click through. Because the times are worked out from the time zone rules rather than a fixed offset, the list stays correct even across a clock change.

City names, IANA time zones and abbreviations

Behind the scenes, time zones are identified by IANA names such as Europe/London, America/New_York and Asia/Kolkata. Each one is named after a large city and covers every place that has followed the same clock rules since 1970. Smaller cities share the zone of a larger one, so Manchester uses Europe/London, Bengaluru uses Asia/Kolkata and San Francisco uses America/Los_Angeles. The search box understands many of these popular cities as well as all the IANA names your browser supports.

Abbreviations such as EST, CET and IST are shown where your browser provides them, but they are not reliable on their own. IST can mean India, Ireland or Israel standard time, and CST is used in the USA, China and Cuba. When precision matters, quote the UTC offset or the city name instead of an abbreviation, especially in international invitations.

If you enter a time that does not exist because the clocks go forward that night, such as 02:30 on the morning of a spring clock change in some zones, the converter warns you and shows the nearest valid time instead.

Privacy and accuracy

The converter works entirely in your browser. It uses the JavaScript Intl API and the time zone database that comes with your browser and operating system, so no dates, cities or meeting details are sent anywhere. Your own time zone is detected from your device settings, not from your location.

Accuracy depends on that database being up to date. Modern browsers update it regularly, but if a country changes its daylight saving rules at short notice, an older browser may not know about the change yet. For critical events far in the future, check the official announcement for the countries involved and keep your browser updated.

Examples you can copy

London        14:00  Sun 25 Oct  UTC+00:00  GMT (clocks went back that morning)
New York      10:00  Sun 25 Oct  UTC-04:00  EDT
Mumbai        19:30  Sun 25 Oct  UTC+05:30
Kathmandu     19:45  Sun 25 Oct  UTC+05:45
Sydney        01:00  Mon 26 Oct  UTC+11:00  AEDT (next day)

?d=2026-11-03&t=15:00&z=Europe/London,America/New_York,Asia/Singapore

d = date, t = time in the first zone, z = zones in order
w = working hours (e.g. 8-16), f=12 for a 12-hour clock

Common mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions