CalcOak

Meeting Time Planner: compare cities side by side and find an hour that works for every time zone

–
–

The first city is the reference: the hour row across the top is its local time. Drag a city to the top to make it the reference, or use the ↑ button. Click any column to see the exact time in every city.

Everyone at work Acceptable for all Someone is asleep

How to use the planner

Your own time zone is detected and added as the first city. Add the cities of the other people on the call from the drop-down; up to eight fit comfortably. The grid then shows one row per city and one column per hour of the reference city's day, coloured by how convenient that hour is for everyone. Green columns fall inside normal working hours for every participant, amber columns need someone to start early or stay late, and red columns would wake somebody up.

Adjust the "working" and "acceptable" ranges if your team keeps different hours; a startup that is happy to take calls at 8 pm can widen the acceptable window and see more options. Change the date to plan for a specific day, then click a column to get the exact local time in each city, ready to paste into a calendar invitation with the copy button.

The best slots are listed underneath the grid so you do not have to scan for green cells, and if there is no hour that suits everyone the planner says so and shows the least painful options instead.

Why use this instead of a world clock

A world clock tells you what time it is somewhere right now. It does not tell you whether 4 pm next Thursday in Berlin lands before or after the clocks change in Sydney, and it does not show three or four cities at once in a way that makes the overlap obvious. Planning across time zones is mostly a problem of seeing everyone's day at the same time, which is what the side-by-side grid is for.

The calculations use the time zone database built into your browser, the same one your operating system relies on, so daylight saving rules are current without this site needing an update. Nothing is sent to a server, and your list of cities is remembered on your device so it is there the next time you open the page.

Frequently asked questions

How does the planner decide which hours are good?+

Each hour is checked against the working-hours range you set, which defaults to 9 am to 6 pm. If every city is inside that range the hour is marked green. If every city is at least inside the wider "acceptable" range, which defaults to 7 am to 9 pm, it is marked amber. Any hour where someone would be asleep or well outside their day is red.

Does it handle daylight saving time?+

Yes. Times are calculated with the browser's built-in time zone database for the exact date you choose, so a meeting planned for March or November correctly reflects that the US, Europe and Australia change their clocks on different weekends and in opposite directions.

Why does the time in one city show +1 next to it?+

The +1 or −1 means that hour falls on the next or previous calendar day in that city compared with the reference city. A 5 pm call on Tuesday in San Francisco is 9 am on Wednesday in Tokyo, so Tokyo shows 09:00 +1.

Can I plan for a date in the future rather than today?+

Yes. Change the date field and the whole grid is recalculated for that day, including any daylight saving changes that happen between now and then. This matters when you are booking something weeks ahead across a clock change.

My city is not in the list. What can I do?+

Pick the nearest city in the same time zone; what matters is the zone, not the city name. Time zones cover large areas, so Chicago works for all of the US Central zone and Berlin for most of central Europe. If a whole zone is missing, tell us via the contact page and we will add it.

Related tools