Converters & time math
UTC / GMT offset reference
Zero-hour, everywhere at once. See UTC ticking live, your own offset from it, and the current time at every offset around the globe — a clean anchor for planning across zones.
| Offset | Time now |
|---|---|
| UTC−11 | ––:–– |
| UTC−10 | ––:–– |
| UTC−9 | ––:–– |
| UTC−8 | ––:–– |
| UTC−7 | ––:–– |
| UTC−6 | ––:–– |
| UTC−5 | ––:–– |
| UTC−4 | ––:–– |
| UTC−3 | ––:–– |
| UTC−2 | ––:–– |
| UTC−1 | ––:–– |
| UTC+0 | ––:–– |
| UTC+1 | ––:–– |
| UTC+2 | ––:–– |
| UTC+3 | ––:–– |
| UTC+4 | ––:–– |
| UTC+5 | ––:–– |
| UTC+5:30 | ––:–– |
| UTC+6 | ––:–– |
| UTC+7 | ––:–– |
| UTC+8 | ––:–– |
| UTC+9 | ––:–– |
| UTC+9:30 | ––:–– |
| UTC+10 | ––:–– |
| UTC+11 | ––:–– |
| UTC+12 | ––:–– |
| UTC+13 | ––:–– |
How to use the utc / gmt offset reference
Find your zone
Look up a city or browse the offsets to see where it currently sits relative to UTC.
Read the sign correctly
A positive offset is ahead of UTC and a negative one behind. UTC+9 means Tokyo's clock reads nine hours later than UTC at the same instant.
Note the half and quarter hours
Not every offset is a whole number. India is UTC+5:30, Nepal UTC+5:45, and parts of Australia and Canada use 30- or 45-minute offsets too.
Check whether it changes
The offset shown is the one in force now. Zones observing daylight saving move between two values across the year, so record the zone name rather than the number.
UTC, GMT, and what an offset really is
UTC — Coordinated Universal Time — is the reference every other civil time is defined against. It is maintained by atomic clocks and kept within a second of astronomical time by the occasional leap second. Every time zone on Earth is expressed as an offset from it, from UTC−12 to UTC+14.
GMT and UTC are used interchangeably in casual writing and are within a second of each other, but they are not the same thing. GMT is a time zone, based on the mean solar time at the Greenwich meridian, and the United Kingdom is on it in winter. UTC is a time standard and is never on daylight saving. For anything technical, say UTC.
The range is wider than the 24 hours you would expect, spanning UTC−12 to UTC+14, because the date line is a political boundary rather than a straight one. Kiribati moved its line east in 1995 so the whole country would share a calendar day, which is why UTC+14 exists and why Kiribati sees the new year before anyone else.
The practical rule for anything that gets stored: keep timestamps in UTC and convert at display time. A UTC instant is unambiguous forever. A local time plus an offset is only correct until a government changes a rule — which happens somewhere in the world most years.
When you'd reach for it
Setting a server's clock
Confirm the offset a machine or container should be reporting.
Writing an API
Decide how to express and document offsets in request and response payloads.
Reading a timestamp
Interpret a +05:30 or −08:00 suffix you have found in a log or a file.
Filing internationally
Work out when a UTC-expressed deadline falls in your own local time.
Amateur radio and aviation
Both operate in UTC by convention; the offset is what gets you back to your clock.
Learning the layout
See how the world's offsets are distributed, including the odd half-hour ones.
Questions & answers
- What's the difference between UTC and GMT?
- In everyday use they're interchangeable and both sit at offset zero. Technically, UTC is a precise atomic-clock standard while GMT is a time zone; UTC is the correct reference for offsets.
- How do I find my own offset?
- It's shown at the top, detected from your device's time zone — for example UTC−5 or UTC+5:30. It already reflects daylight saving if your region observes it.
- Why do some offsets have half hours?
- A handful of regions use 30- or 45-minute offsets, such as India (+5:30), parts of Australia (+9:30), and Nepal (+5:45).