Time zone converter
See what time it is in several cities at once, and find the slot where nobody has to take the call at midnight.
Open the time zone converter →Convert a time between zones
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there is nothing to sign up to.
| Time there | — |
|---|---|
| Date there | — |
| Difference | — |
| In UTC | — |
Why this is harder than adding hours
Time zones look like arithmetic and behave like politics. Three things regularly catch people out:
- Daylight saving dates don't line up. The US springs forward in early March; the UK and EU wait until the last Sunday of the month. For about three weeks a year, London and New York are four hours apart instead of five. The same happens in reverse in autumn.
- Half-hour offsets exist. India (UTC+5:30), Iran (+3:30), Adelaide (+9:30), Newfoundland (−3:30), Nepal (+5:45). "It's about 5 hours ahead" is 30 minutes wrong for a billion people.
- Southern hemisphere seasons are inverted. When the UK gains an hour, Australia loses one. The gap between London and Sydney swings between 9, 10 and 11 hours over a year.
Common offsets from UK time
| City | Winter (UK on GMT) | Summer (UK on BST) |
|---|---|---|
| New York | −5 | −5 |
| Los Angeles | −8 | −8 |
| Berlin / Paris | +1 | +1 |
| Dubai | +4 | +3 |
| Mumbai | +5:30 | +4:30 |
| Singapore | +8 | +7 |
| Tokyo | +9 | +8 |
| Sydney | +11 | +9 |
Offsets to places without daylight saving change when your clocks move, not theirs. That is why a fixed weekly call with Dubai or Mumbai drifts by an hour twice a year.
Scheduling across zones without annoying anyone
Write the zone, not just the time
"3pm" is ambiguous. "15:00 London (UTC+1)" is not. Better still, give two or three local times explicitly.
Beware "GMT" in summer
Between late March and late October the UK is on British Summer Time, which is UTC+1. An invitation saying "10am GMT" sent in July is usually an hour off from what the sender meant.
Find the genuine overlap
London–San Francisco has one comfortable window: 16:00–18:00 UK, which is 08:00–10:00 Pacific. London–Sydney has almost none; someone is going early or late. Knowing that in advance lets you rotate who takes the awkward slot rather than always defaulting to the same person.
Avoid the changeover weekends
Recurring meetings scheduled in a fixed local time silently move for everyone else on clock-change weekends. Late March, late October, early March and early November are worth a diary check.
Your own zone is read from your device's clock settings, which never leaves the browser. The cities you add are stored locally. Palarid has no server-side record of any of it.
Common questions
Is GMT the same as UTC?
For scheduling purposes yes, but they are different things. UTC is an atomic time standard maintained internationally. GMT is a time zone that happens to sit at UTC+0 in winter. The UK is not on GMT for roughly seven months of the year.
Which places skip daylight saving entirely?
Most of Asia and Africa, all of India and China, Japan, Arizona, Hawaii, and Queensland and Western Australia. Russia abolished it in 2014.
Why do some zones use 45 minutes?
Nepal is UTC+5:45 and the Chatham Islands UTC+12:45. Time zones are set by governments, not geometry, and some chose to differentiate from a large neighbour.
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