Time Zone Converter
This time zone converter turns a time in one place into the time in another, applying daylight saving time by each zone’s own rules for the date you choose. It also works as a world clock, showing the time now in the places you pick.
Why a time difference changes during the year
The gap between two places is not a fixed number of hours. Many countries move their clocks forward in spring and back in autumn, but they do it on different dates: the United States changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November, and the European Union on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. For a few weeks each year, London and New York are four hours apart instead of five.
Much of the world does not change its clocks at all, including India, Pakistan, Japan, China and most of Africa, and the southern hemisphere changes in the opposite season from the northern one. So a converter that stores one offset per place is wrong for part of every year. This one looks up both places for the exact date you enter, using the time zone database your browser already holds.
Abbreviations, and what the converter does with them
People write EST, PST or CET all year, even though in summer the eastern United States is on EDT, the Pacific coast on PDT and central Europe on CEST. The converter treats an abbreviation as the region it stands for and applies whatever offset is in force there on the date, then shows the abbreviation actually in use, so the result says what a clock on the wall in that place would say.
A few abbreviations are fixed offsets rather than places: UTC and GMT are both UTC+0 and never change. Some letters are shared, too: IST stands for India Standard Time on these pages, although Israel and Ireland also use it. When it matters, pick the city rather than the letters.
Converting a time for a meeting
Enter the date and time in the zone where the meeting is set, and the converter gives the same moment everywhere else you add. Check the date as well as the time: a call at nine in the evening in California is already the next morning in India, and a deadline written as midnight in one zone can land in the middle of the working day in another.
The most searched conversions have a page of their own, listed above, each one showing both clocks now and converting any time you enter. Every conversion runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Questions and answers
How do I convert a time between time zones?
Enter the date and time in the first zone and pick the second, and the converter shows the same moment there. The date matters, because daylight saving time can change the difference.
What is the difference between UTC and GMT?
For converting a time they are the same, UTC+0. UTC is the scientific standard kept by atomic clocks, and GMT is the name of the time zone the United Kingdom uses in winter.
Does the converter handle daylight saving time?
Yes. It applies each zone’s own rules for the date you enter, so a conversion made for a date in July and one made for a date in January can differ by an hour.
Is EST the same as ET?
Not quite. EST is Eastern Standard Time, UTC−5, used in winter; in summer the eastern United States is on EDT, UTC−4. ET covers both, and it is what most people mean when they write EST.
Why is the difference between two cities sometimes an hour off?
Because the two places change their clocks on different dates, or only one of them changes at all. For those weeks the usual difference is an hour more or less.