Convert Between Time Zones
Select a time and two time zones to see the instant conversion.
How the Time Zone Converter Works
Convert any time across the globe in four steps.
Enter Date & Time
Set the date and time you want to convert. Use "Now" to auto-fill the current moment.
Select Source Zone
Choose the time zone where the original time is located. 20+ world zones available.
Select Target Zone
Choose the destination time zone. The converter shows the equivalent time instantly.
See Results
View the converted time, date, UTC offset difference, and any date changes between zones.
Understanding Time Zones
How the world keeps time — and why conversion matters.
What are time zones?
Time zones are regions of the Earth that observe the same standard time. The world is divided into 24 primary time zones, each roughly 15 degrees of longitude wide. Each zone is defined by its offset from UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
UTC — the global reference
UTC is the time standard that all time zones are measured against. New York is UTC−5, London is UTC+0, Tokyo is UTC+9. To convert between any two zones, find the difference between their UTC offsets.
Daylight Saving Time (DST)
Many regions shift their clocks forward in spring and back in autumn. This means a zone's UTC offset changes during the year. New York is UTC−5 in winter but UTC−4 during DST. Our converter accounts for this automatically.
The International Date Line
When converting across many time zones, the date may change. If it's Monday 11 PM in New York, it's already Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo. The converter clearly shows any date changes. Work out what the clock will read later with the future time calculator.
When to Use a Time Zone Converter
Essential for anyone working or communicating across time zones.
Remote Team Meetings
Schedule calls with team members across multiple time zones. Find overlapping business hours that work for everyone.
Travel Planning
Know what time you'll arrive in the destination time zone. Plan for jet lag and schedule activities accordingly.
Stock Market Hours
Track when markets open and close across global exchanges — NYSE, LSE, TSE, and more.
Live Events & Streams
Convert event start times to your local zone. Never miss a product launch, game release, or live stream.
International Calls
Check what time it is for the person you're calling before you dial. Avoid waking someone at 3 AM their time.
Global Business
Coordinate deadlines, deliveries, and handoffs across offices in different countries and time zones.
Popular Time Zone Conversions
Quick reference for the most common time zone pairs.
US time zones
The continental US spans 4 time zones: Eastern (ET), Central (CT), Mountain (MT), and Pacific (PT). Each is 1 hour apart. When it's 3 PM in New York, it's 12 PM in Los Angeles.
US to Europe
New York to London is typically +5 hours (or +4 during DST overlap). So a 9 AM New York meeting is 2 PM London time.
US to Asia
New York to Tokyo is +14 hours. A Monday 8 AM call in New York is Tuesday 10 PM in Tokyo — literally the next day.
Europe to Asia
London to Singapore is +8 hours. Paris to Tokyo is +8 hours. These conversions are crucial for Euro-Asian business coordination.
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
A meeting time moved across three continents, working through UTC rather than zone-to-zone.
A product team schedules a call for 4:00 PM in London during August, and needs the local time in New York, Mumbai and Tokyo.
Convert the source time to UTC
London in August = BST = UTC+1 16:00 − 1 = 15:00 UTCAlways route through UTC rather than converting zone to zone. London is not UTC in summer — it observes British Summer Time, which is the detail most manual conversions miss.
Running total15:00 UTC
Convert UTC to New York
New York in August = EDT = UTC−4 15:00 − 4 = 11:00A five-hour difference from London, not the four hours the standard-time offsets suggest — both cities are in daylight saving, but their offsets differ.
Running total11:00 AM in New York
Convert UTC to Mumbai
India = IST = UTC+5:30 (no DST) 15:00 + 5:30 = 20:30India uses a half-hour offset and observes no daylight saving at all. Assuming whole-hour offsets is a common and immediately visible error.
Running total8:30 PM in Mumbai
Convert UTC to Tokyo
Japan = JST = UTC+9 (no DST) 15:00 + 9 = 24:00 → 00:00 next dayThe result rolls past midnight, so the meeting falls on the following calendar day in Tokyo. A time without its date is dangerously incomplete here.
Running total12:00 AM the next day in Tokyo
Check whether the slot is workable
London 16:00 · New York 11:00 · Mumbai 20:30 · Tokyo 00:00+1Three of the four are reasonable; Tokyo is at midnight. Seeing every local time together is what turns a conversion into a scheduling decision.
Running totalNot viable for Tokyo
4:00 PM London in August is 11:00 AM in New York, 8:30 PM in Mumbai and midnight the next day in Tokyo. Converting via UTC handles the DST and half-hour cases automatically.
Common Mistakes and Pro Tips
Mistakes that quietly corrupt your numbers
Treating London as UTC all year round.
London is UTC in winter and UTC+1 during British Summer Time.
Why it matters: GMT and UTC coincide only for part of the year. Assuming they are always identical puts every summer conversion out by exactly one hour, and the resulting time still looks entirely plausible.
Assuming every time zone is offset by a whole number of hours.
Several are not: India is UTC+5:30, Nepal is UTC+5:45, parts of Australia are UTC+9:30.
Why it matters: A whole-hour assumption puts India half an hour out on every conversion. Because the error is smaller than an hour it often survives review, right up until someone joins a call at the wrong moment.
Converting directly between two zones by subtracting their offsets.
Route through UTC: source to UTC, then UTC to target.
Why it matters: Direct conversion requires both offsets to be correct for that specific date, and quietly fails whenever the two zones enter daylight saving on different dates — which is most of March, October and November.
Sending a converted time without the date attached.
Always include the date, especially when the conversion crosses midnight.
Why it matters: The Tokyo result above is midnight — but on which day? A bare "12:00 AM" is ambiguous by 24 hours, which is a far larger error than any offset mistake.
Pro tips
Always route through UTC
Convert source to UTC, then UTC to target. It is one extra step that removes every daylight-saving edge case, because UTC has no transitions.
Send the date with the time
Write "Tue 12 Aug, 16:00 BST" rather than "4 PM". Any conversion crossing midnight changes the date, and the recipient cannot recover it.
Distrust zone abbreviations
CST means Central Standard Time in North America and China Standard Time in Asia — eight hours apart. Name the city or use the offset instead.
Watch the transition weeks
Europe and North America change clocks on different dates, so for several weeks each year the usual offset between them is wrong by an hour. Re-check any recurring meeting in March and October.
Anchor recurring meetings to one zone
Fix a repeating call to a specific city rather than to a fixed offset. Everyone else’s local time then shifts correctly on its own as their clocks change.
Check all participants at once
Before confirming a slot, list every local time together. A time that works for three of four people is not a workable meeting.
Major Time Zone Offsets
Standard and daylight offsets for widely used zones, with the half-hour cases and non-observers marked.
| Location | Standard | Daylight | Observes DST |
|---|---|---|---|
| London, UK | UTC+0 (GMT) | UTC+1 (BST) | Yes |
| Paris / Berlin / Madrid | UTC+1 (CET) | UTC+2 (CEST) | Yes |
| New York / Toronto | UTC−5 (EST) | UTC−4 (EDT) | Yes |
| Chicago | UTC−6 (CST) | UTC−5 (CDT) | Yes |
| Denver | UTC−7 (MST) | UTC−6 (MDT) | Yes |
| Los Angeles | UTC−8 (PST) | UTC−7 (PDT) | Yes |
| Phoenix, Arizona | UTC−7 | UTC−7 | No |
| São Paulo, Brazil | UTC−3 | UTC−3 | No |
| Lagos, Nigeria | UTC+1 | UTC+1 | No |
| Johannesburg | UTC+2 | UTC+2 | No |
| Dubai, UAE | UTC+4 | UTC+4 | No |
| Mumbai / Delhi, India | UTC+5:30 | UTC+5:30 | No |
| Kathmandu, Nepal | UTC+5:45 | UTC+5:45 | No |
| Singapore | UTC+8 | UTC+8 | No |
| Beijing / Shanghai | UTC+8 | UTC+8 | No |
| Tokyo / Seoul | UTC+9 | UTC+9 | No |
| Adelaide, Australia | UTC+9:30 | UTC+10:30 | Yes |
| Sydney, Australia | UTC+10 | UTC+11 | Yes |
| Auckland, New Zealand | UTC+12 | UTC+13 | Yes |
No rows match that filter.
Southern-hemisphere zones observe daylight saving during the northern winter, so the gap to Europe changes twice a year by two hours rather than one. To measure how long something ran across zones, normalise to UTC first and use the time difference calculator.
Time Zones in Practice
Offsets are the easy part; the calendar around them is not.
Why UTC is the right pivot
UTC is a reference scale rather than a place. It observes no daylight saving, never shifts, and every civil time zone is defined as an offset from it.
That makes it the only safe intermediate step. Converting zone-to-zone requires knowing both offsets on the specific date in question; converting via UTC requires knowing each zone's own rules independently, which is a far smaller thing to get right.
It is also why systems store timestamps in UTC and convert only for display. Every distributed system that skips this eventually discovers why it should not have.
The transition weeks nobody plans for
Daylight saving dates are not internationally coordinated. Most of Europe changes on the last Sunday in March and October; the United States and Canada change on the second Sunday in March and first Sunday in November.
For roughly three weeks in spring and one in autumn, the offset between London and New York is four hours instead of five — or the reverse. A recurring call anchored to a fixed offset silently moves by an hour for everyone.
Anchoring to a city rather than an offset solves this. Calendar software does it automatically; spreadsheets and manual schedules do not.
Why abbreviations are unreliable
Time zone abbreviations are not standardised and several collide outright:
- CST — Central Standard Time (UTC−6) or China Standard Time (UTC+8)
- IST — India (UTC+5:30), Ireland (UTC+1) or Israel (UTC+2)
- BST — British Summer Time (UTC+1) or Bangladesh Standard Time (UTC+6)
The unambiguous alternatives are an IANA identifier such as Asia/Kolkata, or the explicit offset. In written communication, naming the city is usually clearest of all.
The date line and next-day meetings
Conversions across large offsets routinely change the date. A 4 PM London call is already the following day in Auckland, and a Friday-afternoon meeting in California is Saturday morning in Sydney.
This is a scheduling constraint as much as an arithmetic one — a technically valid slot can fall on a weekend or public holiday for some participants while sitting mid-week for others.
Whenever a conversion crosses midnight, carry the date explicitly. "Midnight Tokyo" is meaningless without knowing which midnight, and it is the one error that a plausible-looking clock reading cannot reveal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the Time Zone Converter.
How do I convert time between time zones?
Enter the time you want to convert, select the source time zone, and select the target time zone. The converter instantly shows the equivalent time in the target zone, including any date changes.
What is UTC and why does it matter?
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the global time standard. All time zones are defined as offsets from UTC. New York is UTC-5, Tokyo is UTC+9. Converting between zones means calculating the difference in their UTC offsets.
Does the converter handle daylight saving time?
Yes. The converter uses your browser's built-in timezone database which includes current DST rules for all supported zones. Times are adjusted automatically for DST.
Can the date change when converting time zones?
Yes. If it's 11 PM in New York and you convert to Tokyo (UTC+9, 14 hours ahead), the result is 12 PM the next day. The converter shows date changes clearly.
How many time zones are supported?
The converter supports 20+ major world time zones including all US zones, European zones, Asian zones, and UTC. These cover the vast majority of business and travel needs.
Is this useful for scheduling remote meetings?
Absolutely. Enter your local time, select your time zone and your colleague's time zone, and see exactly what time the meeting would be for them. It eliminates scheduling confusion across borders.
Is London always the same as UTC?
No. London is UTC during winter but UTC+1 during British Summer Time, roughly from late March to late October. Treating GMT and UTC as permanently identical puts every summer conversion out by exactly one hour.
Why do some zones have half-hour offsets?
Time zones are political boundaries rather than purely geographic ones, and several countries chose offsets that better match local solar time. India is UTC+5:30, Nepal is UTC+5:45, and parts of Australia use UTC+9:30.
Why does the difference between London and New York change?
Because Europe and North America start and end daylight saving on different dates. For a few weeks each spring and autumn the usual five-hour gap becomes four, which is enough to move a recurring meeting for everyone.
What does time zone abbreviation CST mean?
It is ambiguous — it means Central Standard Time (UTC−6) in North America and China Standard Time (UTC+8) in Asia, fourteen hours apart. Use the city name or the explicit offset instead of an abbreviation.
Should I convert directly between two zones?
No, route through UTC. Direct conversion depends on both offsets being correct for that specific date and fails whenever the two zones observe daylight saving on different schedules, which happens for several weeks each year.