Meeting Planner - Find Overlapping Work Hours Across Time Zones

Add 2 to 5 cities and see each zone's 24-hour day colored by working hours (9:00 to 17:00), with the shared overlap highlighted. Free and browser-based, click any hour to convert it everywhere.

Working hours (9-17)Off hoursEveryone available

Amsterdam Europe/Amsterdam GMT+2

New York America/New_York GMT-4

Singapore Asia/Singapore GMT+8

No shared 9:00 to 17:00 overlap between these zones. Someone will need an early morning or a late evening; click an hour above to compare.

Planning Meetings Across Time Zones

The planner draws one 24-hour strip per city, aligned on the same moment in time: every column is the same instant everywhere in the world, and the number in each cell is the local hour in that city. Green cells fall inside standard working hours, 9:00 to 17:00, and a column turns indigo when it is green for every city at once. That indigo band is your candidate meeting window.

Some combinations simply have no overlap. Amsterdam and Singapore share a comfortable morning-to-afternoon window because the gap is only 6 or 7 hours, but Amsterdam, New York, and Singapore together usually produce zero indigo columns: when it is 15:00 in Amsterdam it is 9:00 in New York but already 21:00 in Singapore. In that case click any column to see the exact local times and pick the least painful compromise, or rotate the inconvenient slot between regions from one meeting to the next.

The tool uses your browser's built-in IANA time zone database via the Intl API, so daylight saving time is applied correctly for the current date: the strip for today in late March can differ from the strip in early November because the US and Europe switch DST on different weekends, which temporarily shifts the overlap by an hour. Offsets shown next to each city name are live for today, not fixed labels.

A practical rule of thumb for recurring calls: teams spread over 8 or fewer hours of offset can usually find a fair daily window, while spreads above 10 hours work better with asynchronous updates plus one or two anchor meetings per week. To convert a single specific timestamp rather than scan a whole day, the Timezone Converter does direct one-off conversions, and the Meeting Cost Calculator shows what that recurring call actually costs in salary terms.

How the Meeting Planner Works

  1. 01Search and add 2 to 5 cities or IANA time zones.
  2. 02Each zone gets a 24-hour strip; green cells are working hours (9:00 to 17:00).
  3. 03Columns where every zone is green turn indigo: that is your overlap window.
  4. 04Click any hour to see the exact local time in every added zone.

Finding a Fair Meeting Time

Every column in the grid is the same instant worldwide, so scanning for indigo columns instantly shows when everyone is inside normal office hours. If there is no overlap at all, click hours at the edge of someone's day to compare concrete local times: an 8:00 start in one city may unlock a 17:00 slot in another. For recurring meetings across a large spread, rotate the inconvenient slot between regions so the same team is not always on the late shift.

When to Use a Time Zone Overlap Planner

Use it when scheduling calls across continents, planning a distributed team's daily standup, setting webinar times for an international audience, or checking before you propose a slot that looks fine in your calendar but lands at 3:00 in someone else's. It beats mental offset math, especially around daylight saving transitions.

Common Use Cases

Tips

  • Add zones in order of team size so the biggest group's strip is on top.
  • Check the plan again in the weeks around DST switches; overlaps can move by an hour.
  • No overlap? Alternate the early and late slot between regions from meeting to meeting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the planner handle daylight saving time?
Yes. It uses your browser's IANA time zone database via the Intl API, so today's actual offsets are applied, including DST. Note that the US and Europe switch on different weekends in March and late October, so overlaps can temporarily shift by an hour during those weeks.
Why is there no overlap between my cities?
With more than about 8 or 9 hours of spread between the westernmost and easternmost zones, no hour falls inside 9:00 to 17:00 everywhere. Amsterdam, New York, and Singapore together span 13 hours, which mathematically rules out a shared office-hours slot. Click cells to find the least bad compromise instead.
Can I change the working hours from 9 to 17?
The strip colors are fixed at 9:00 to 17:00 as a common baseline, but the numbers in every cell show the actual local hour, so you can visually extend the acceptable window, for example treating 8:00 or 18:00 as acceptable edges for your team.
How do I find a specific city that is not listed?
The search covers the full IANA database available in your browser, typically over 400 zones. Search by the nearest major city: for example Rotterdam is not a zone, but Europe/Amsterdam covers it. Type at least two letters to see matches.
What does the label under each city mean, like GMT+2?
It is that zone's live UTC offset for today, straight from the time zone database. It changes with daylight saving, which is why Amsterdam shows GMT+2 in summer and GMT+1 in winter.

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