Time Zone Converter (Time Difference Calculator)
Compare the local time of two timezones, countries or cities of the world.
Time Difference, Current Local Time and Date of the World's Time Zones
Schedule online meetings across time zones
Nowadays, video conferences and online meetings are indispensable and an important tool for staying in touch with our loved ones or business partners. We help you find the best time for your video calls across national borders and time zones.
Look up the current local time and the date
Simply enter any place, country or time zone and figure out the current local time with its corresponding date.
Identify the time difference between two cities or countries
Calculate the time difference between two places with the time zone calculator.
Compare the local time of two world cities
Tabular comparison of two local times, e.g. to plan a telephone conference.
World map with time zones
World Time and Time Zone Converter: Calculate the time difference between two time zones of the world.
Daylight Saving Time
Future Clock Changes (Worldwide)
Time Zone Asia / Gaza
Saturday, April 20, 2024
1 hour forward: from 2:00 am to 3:00 am
(To Daylight Saving Time)
Major Cities in Time Zone:
Time Zone Africa / Cairo
Friday, April 26, 2024
1 hour forward: from 12:00 am to 1:00 am
(To Daylight Saving Time)
Major Cities in Time Zone:
Places from current international reports
Time Zone
What is a time zone?
A time zone is a geographical area that has the same state-regulated time, known as "standard time".
Due to the size of some countries and the spread of other places belonging under their jurisdiction, one country can be divided into a number of time zones. The United States, for example, contain twenty-nine time zones.
Why do we have time zones?
The use of time zones makes it easier for us to organise our lives, from commercial operations up to traveling. People living within the same time zone know that they will be working at the same time, while someone in another time zone will work based on the local time of his or her own time zone.
The history of time zones
Time has traditionally been measured according to the position of the sun in the sky, which is different depending on where you are in the world. In the nineteenth century, when mechanical clocks began to become popular, time was calculated locally. Since the time calculations were based on the position of the sun, they could vary by four minutes for each degree of longitude. A better system was required to enable an efficient operation of railways and new telecommunication systems.
In 1847, British railway companies began to standardize the time they were using by providing their staff with portable chronometers, resulting in what became known as ‘Railway Time’. However, in 1855, the Royal Greenwich Observatory started transmitting time signals and in 1880, the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) became the country’s official standard time.
Other countries created their own standard times and, in the late 1880s, the International Meridian Conference proposed a standardised 24-hour day, starting off at midnight GMT. Eventually the rest of the world began to use this system, shaping the time zones we know today.
UTC (Universal Time Coordinated)
UTC, also known as Universal Time Coordinated, replaced the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in 1961 as the time calculation system by which all zones calculated their time. It’s based on the International Atomic Time (TAI), a high-precision time calculation which is composed of an average time of more than 200 atomic clocks around the world, although UTC is slightly behind the International Atomic Time.
The world’s time zones are usually shown as either a positive (i.e. ‘+’ a specified number of hours UTC, meaning ahead of UTC) or a negative deviation of UTC (i.e. ‘-’ a specified number of hours UTC, meaning behind UTC).
DST (Daylight Saving Time)
The Daylight Saving Time is used by many countries during the summer, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Spain and France and in most American States, so that it is longer daylight in the evenings and longer dark in the mornings. In regions that are using Daylight Saving Time the clocks are typically moved forward by one hour at the beginning of the spring and moved back again by an hour in autumn.
The system, which is usually attributed the English-born astronomer and entomologist George Vernon Hudson, was first introduced in Germany during World War I to save coal by requiring less light in the evening. Other countries, including the UK, soon followed Germany.
Standard Time
Standard time is the name used for the uniform time created by the synchronization of all clocks within a time zone. In the UK, the standard time was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, when clocks were set according to the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), shown on the clock on the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.
Standard times in other time zones around the world were shown as deviations from GMT until 1961 when the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) was introduced.
The standard time of countries using the Daylight Savings Time is usually given without taking the DST into account.
Time Difference
Time differences between time zones are simple to work out due to the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). Standard times are shown as positive or negative deviations of UTC, that's why time differences are calculated by determining UTC and calculating each time zone from there. If applicable, differences to standard times as a result of DST also need to be taken into account.
The simplest way to figure out the time in another part of the world is to make use of this website. It will help you to discover what cities are in which time zones and it will give you the standard times within each time zone. Furthermore, it will do time difference calculations for you.