About the Time Zone Converter
What is a time zone converter?
It answers the question you actually have, which is rarely "what time is it in Tokyo" on its own. It is usually "if we meet at two, who is having dinner and who is asleep." So this tool shows every city you care about at once, side by side, with the difference from your own clock spelled out in words rather than left for you to work out.
Underneath it uses the IANA time zone database that ships with your browser, the same one Linux and macOS use. That matters because time zones move. Countries change their rules, daylight saving start dates shift, and a hardcoded offset table goes stale within a year. Reading the rules from the operating system means a date in October 2026 is handled with October 2026's rules, not today's.
How to Use This Tool
- The tool opens on your own time zone with the clock running. Everything is measured against that reference city.
- Search for a city, a country or an abbreviation like
PST or IST and pick it from the list. Add as many as twenty.
- To pin a moment, type a date and time. The live clock stops and every city updates to that instant.
- Read the strip below the list. Green is working hours, amber is early or late, gray means people are asleep. Click any hour along the top to jump the whole board to it.
- Use the arrow buttons to reorder the list, or the clock button on a row to make that city the reference instead.
- When the time works, download a calendar file, open it in Google Calendar, or copy a link that reopens this exact board for whoever you send it to.
Common Use Cases
The same board answers several different questions depending on who is looking at it.
- Booking a call across continents. The overlap line tells you straight out whether a shared working hour exists, and when it does not, which is honestly the more useful answer.
- Running a distributed team. Save your team's cities once and the board is there every time you open the page.
- Watching a launch or a live stream. Paste the announced time, set the reference to the host city, and read off your own.
- Writing software that stores timestamps. Add UTC to the list and watch it stay still while everything else shifts twice a year. That is the whole argument for storing UTC.
- Travel planning. Set the arrival date rather than today, because whether a country is on daylight saving in November changes the answer.
- Calling family. The asleep and awake colors are quicker to read than any number.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convert a time from one time zone to another?
Set the reference city to the zone the time is written in, type the date and time, then read the row for the zone you want. The tool works out the offset for that specific date, which is the part people get wrong when they do it in their head. New York is five hours behind London in January and four hours behind in July, because the two places change their clocks on different weekends.
Does this handle daylight saving time?
Yes, and it handles it for the date you pick rather than today. Each row shows the abbreviation in force at that moment, so you see EST or EDT rather than a vague Eastern label. Hover over that abbreviation and it tells you when the clocks next change in that zone. If you type a time that does not exist, such as 2:30 AM on the morning the clocks jump forward, the tool says so instead of quietly picking something.
What is the difference between UTC and GMT?
In everyday use they are the same, and both sit at UTC+0. What separates them is what each one is. UTC is a time standard kept by atomic clocks, while GMT is a time zone that the United Kingdom sits in during winter. Software should say UTC. A person in London in January can say either. In July, London is on British Summer Time, which is UTC+1, so GMT stops being right for the UK for seven months of the year.
What is the best time to schedule a meeting across time zones?
Whatever the green band says. As a rule of thumb, the US East Coast and Western Europe share the early afternoon in New York, Europe and India share the European afternoon, and the US West Coast and Asia share almost nothing civilized. When there is no overlap the fair answer is to rotate who takes the awkward hour rather than always giving it to the same people.
Why do some places have a 30 or 45 minute offset?
Because time zones are political, not geometric. India runs on UTC+5:30 for the whole country, Nepal on UTC+5:45, and parts of Australia on UTC+9:30. Chatham Islands sit at UTC+12:45. This tool shows the real offset rather than rounding to the nearest hour, so a 5:45 zone lands on 5:45.
Can I send someone a link to a specific time?
Yes. Pick your date and time, then use Copy link. The address carries the cities, the reference zone and the exact moment, so whoever opens it sees the same board rather than their own idea of now. It is a cleaner way to announce a start time than writing out four zones in an email and hoping nobody mistypes one.
Does it remember my cities?
Your list, your reference zone and the 12 or 24 hour setting are saved in your own browser, so the page opens with your team already on it. Nothing is stored on our side. Clearing your browser data or opening the page in a private window resets it, and Start over clears it deliberately.
Is anything I look up sent to your server?
No. Every calculation runs in JavaScript on your machine using the time zone database already installed there, so the cities you search for and the times you enter stay with you. If you need to work with raw timestamps instead, our Unix Timestamp Converter works the same way.