Meeting Time Zone Planner — Find the Best Time for Everyone
This free meeting time zone planner shows what a proposed meeting time looks like for every participant in their own time zone. Add participants, pick a time, and the DST-safe overlap finder highlights the hours where everyone falls within working hours — with a shareable link and no data sent to any server. It works as a meeting planner time zones tool for any team size, from a single trans-Atlantic pair to a dozen offices spread across every continent.
Local times
| Participant | Time zone | Local time | Working hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| My location | Europe/Minsk | Sun, Sep 6, 10:00 | In window |
24-Hour Overlap Finder
Each block represents one hour of the day in the base participant's time zone. Green means all participants are within working hours. Amber means partial overlap. Neutral means no one is in their window.
Working-Hours Overlap for Common City Pairs
The hours below are arithmetic from each city's standard-time UTC offset and a 9:00am–6:00pm working day — not a claim about anyone's actual schedule. During the one to four weeks each spring and autumn when the US and EU or Australia change their clocks on different dates, these numbers shift; add your own participants to the planner above for the current date.
| City pair | Time gap | Standard-hours overlap | Overlap window |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco (PST, UTC-8) – London (GMT, UTC+0) | 8 hours | 1 hour | 9:00–10:00am PT = 5:00–6:00pm GMT |
| New York (EST, UTC-5) – Berlin (CET, UTC+1) | 6 hours | 3 hours | 9:00am–12:00pm ET = 3:00–6:00pm CET |
| London (GMT, UTC+0) – Bangalore (IST, UTC+5:30) | 5.5 hours | 3.5 hours | 9:00am–12:30pm GMT = 2:30–6:00pm IST |
| New York (EST, UTC-5) – Sydney (AEST, UTC+10) | 15 hours | None | No standard-hours overlap — the two working days do not touch |
New York and Sydney share almost no standard working hours at all — a common pattern for teams split across the US and Asia-Pacific. The distributed-team rules further down this page cover what to do when the overlap finder comes back empty.
Why the Overlap Shifts Twice a Year
Daylight saving time is the single most common reason a recurring cross-time-zone meeting suddenly feels off by an hour. The planner above always uses the correct offset for the exact date you pick — here is why that matters.
The US and EU change clocks on different dates
The United States starts daylight saving on the second Sunday of March and ends it on the first Sunday of November. The European Union starts on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October — roughly one to three weeks later in spring and one week earlier in autumn.
Why the gap shifts twice a year
Outside the transition window, a US–EU pair like New York and London sits at a steady 5-hour gap: both on standard time in winter, both on daylight time in summer. During the mismatch weeks — after the US has sprung forward but before the EU has — the same pair briefly sits at a 4-hour gap instead, then returns to 5 hours once the EU catches up.
Which pairs break during the mismatch weeks
Any recurring meeting between a US city and an EU or UK city is affected: New York–London, New York–Berlin, Chicago–Paris, and similar pairs all shift by an hour for those one-to-three-week windows twice a year. A meeting booked at a fixed local time in one region can land an hour earlier or later than expected for the other.
Southern-hemisphere pairs shift in the opposite direction
Australia and New Zealand observe daylight saving in their own summer, which is the northern hemisphere's winter — so their DST calendar runs roughly opposite to the US and EU. A pair like Sydney–London has its own separate set of mismatch weeks, distinct from the US–EU ones.
During a mismatch week, the standard-time overlap table above is off by an hour for the affected pair — the planner recalculates the true offset for whichever date you pick, so trust the planner over the table when they disagree.
Rules for Scheduling a Distributed Team
The overlap strip above tells you how much shared working time your team has. These rules cover what to do with that answer — whether it is three green hours or none at all.
Protect the overlap window you do have
If the overlap strip above shows even one or two green hours, treat that window as scarce and reserve it for meetings that genuinely need real-time discussion — decisions, planning, or anything with back-and-forth. Move status updates and one-way information out of it.
Rotate the inconvenient slot
When every option requires someone to join early or late, alternate who takes the bad slot on a fixed schedule — for example, every other week — instead of defaulting to the same region every time. Put the rotation directly on the recurring calendar invite so nobody has to renegotiate it.
Replace status meetings with an async handoff
A meeting that exists only to relay information does not need a live audience. Replace it with a short recorded update or written summary on a fixed cadence — what happened, what was decided, what is blocked — and reserve the live slot for topics that actually require discussion.
Use core hours for decisions, not updates
If your team has any shared window at all, reserve it explicitly for decisions that need every stakeholder present. Publish a short list of "core hours" so the whole team knows which slot is protected and stops scheduling status syncs into it by default.
Confirm the time zone in every invite title
Ambiguous invites ("10am call") are a common source of missed meetings across regions. Put the time zone abbreviation or a UTC reference directly in the calendar invite title, not just the body, so it survives forwarding and calendar app time zone auto-conversion mistakes.
Record and summarize the meetings people miss
For distributed teams, someone is always asleep during any given meeting. A recording with an automatic summary and action items — which is what MeetWave generates from a meeting without a bot joining the call — lets people who could not attend catch up in minutes instead of asking around for a recap.
Why Use a Meeting Time Zone Planner?
Scheduling across time zones is error-prone when done manually. A single DST transition or off-by-one hour mistake can mean half the team joins an hour early or late.
- Instant multi-timezone conversion — see all participants’ local times in one table
- DST-safe — uses the browser’s Intl API so daylight saving changes are handled automatically
- Overlap finder highlights every hour where all participants fall within working hours
- Configurable working-hours window — adjust start and end time to match each team’s schedule
- Reference table of standard-time overlap hours for common city pairs on this page
- DST transition guide on this page explains why recurring meetings drift twice a year
- Concrete fallback rules for teams with no meaningful overlap, not just a converter
- Shareable link encodes all inputs (no personal data) so teammates see the same planner
- Copy summary exports a plain-text block ready to paste into Slack, email, or a calendar invite
- 100% private — no data is sent to any server; everything runs in your browser
- Works for any combination of cities, teams, or countries across all IANA time zones
Frequently Asked Questions
Make Every Meeting Count
MeetWave records your Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet calls locally — then generates AI summaries, action items, and meeting insights automatically. No bot joins your call. Privacy-first, works on Windows — there is no macOS or mobile version yet.