Time Difference Calculator – Compare Time Zones Worldwide

Time Difference
Calculator

Compare current times between any two cities or time zones worldwide. DST-aware, with a full-day conversion table.

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Location 1 UTC offset
Location 2 UTC offset

Time Difference Table

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Frequently Asked Questions

The calculator uses each city's IANA time zone identifier to determine the current UTC offset, including any active Daylight Saving Time adjustments. It then subtracts one offset from the other to give you the precise difference in hours and minutes.
Yes. The calculator reads the live UTC offset from your browser using the Intl API, which is always DST-aware. This means if London is on BST (+1) or GMT (+0), the correct offset is always used automatically. A warning banner appears if clocks change in either city today.
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the world's primary time standard. A UTC offset shows how many hours and minutes a location's local time differs from UTC. For example, New York in summer is UTC−4 (EDT), meaning it is 4 hours behind UTC.
Absolutely. The full-day conversion table shows corresponding times every 2 hours across a full 24-hour period, making it easy to find a mutual working window between two locations anywhere in the world. For more advanced meeting planning, check out our Meeting Planner.
Many cities within the same country or region observe the same standard time. For example, Madrid and Paris both use Central European Time (CET / UTC+1). Despite being geographically different, they always show the same clock time.
The times shown are derived from your device's system clock combined with accurate IANA time zone data built into every modern browser. As long as your device clock is synchronized (e.g. via NTP), the times will be accurate to within a second.
GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is a historical time zone anchored to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the modern international standard maintained by atomic clocks. Both share the UTC+0 baseline, but UTC is never adjusted for seasonal changes and is more precise. In everyday use the two terms are interchangeable, but software and aviation use UTC exclusively. Learn more in our GMT vs UTC guide.
France holds the record with 12 official time zones when all overseas territories are counted. Russia spans 11 contiguous time zones — the widest east-west spread of any single country. The United States has 6 standard zones (plus territories), Australia has 5, and Brazil has 4. China officially uses a single time zone (UTC+8) despite stretching across five natural geographic zones.
India Standard Time (IST) at UTC+5:30 was chosen at independence as a compromise to keep the entire subcontinent — spanning roughly 30° of longitude — in a single time zone while minimising the deviation from solar noon across the country. Nepal goes even further with UTC+5:45, the world's only 45-minute offset, adopted to distinguish itself from India. Other half-hour zones include Afghanistan (UTC+4:30), Iran (UTC+3:30/+4:30 with DST), and parts of Australia (UTC+9:30).
No — only about 70 countries currently observe DST, mostly in Europe, North America, and parts of South America and Australasia. Large parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East do not change their clocks at all. Even within countries there are exceptions: Arizona (US) does not observe DST (with the exception of the Navajo Nation), and Queensland (Australia) has not used DST since 1992. For a full overview, see our Daylight Saving Time guide.
When two cities observe DST on different schedules — for example London switches in late March while New York switches 2–3 weeks earlier — the time difference between them temporarily changes. During those intermediate weeks New York is only 4 hours behind London instead of the usual 5. This calculator always uses the live UTC offset, so it reflects the current difference correctly. The conversion table also marks rows where a DST change occurs within the day with a ⚠ DST indicator.
IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) time zone identifiers are the global standard for naming time zones in software. They take the form of Region/City — for example America/New_York, Europe/London, or Asia/Kolkata. Unlike abbreviations such as EST or BST (which are ambiguous), IANA IDs are unambiguous and encode the full history of DST rules for that location. This calculator uses IANA identifiers exclusively.
The International Date Line (IDL) runs roughly along the 180° meridian in the Pacific Ocean. Crossing it westward moves you one calendar day forward; crossing it eastward moves you one day back. This means that some Pacific island nations like Samoa (UTC+13) are a full day ahead of nearby American Samoa (UTC−11), even though they are geographically close. The maximum possible time difference between any two points on Earth is 26 hours.
To convert manually: (1) Find the UTC offset of each city. (2) Express the source time as UTC by subtracting its offset. (3) Add the destination city's UTC offset to get the local time there. For example, to convert 3:00 PM New York (UTC−5) to Tokyo (UTC+9): 15:00 − (−5) = 20:00 UTC, then 20:00 + 9 = 05:00 next day Tokyo time. This calculator performs all these steps automatically, including accounting for DST in both cities.

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