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Time Zone Meeting Planner

Compare working hours across up to six time zones to find the best meeting window.

  • timezone
  • meeting
  • schedule
  • working hours
  • overlap

About Time Zone Meeting Planner

Distributed teams live with a constant scheduling tax: any meeting that spans three or four time zones means somebody is on a video call at a strange hour. The trick to picking a fair time is being able to see all the working days laid out side by side and spot the overlapping window at a glance, rather than doing the offset arithmetic in your head.

This planner shows a 24-hour grid for up to six time zones at once, with each zone's working hours shaded green, the two-hour "edges" either side in amber, and the hours that work for everybody marked in bold. It's the same chart engineering and operations teams sketch on whiteboards when planning standups, handoffs, and customer calls — but live, and editable.

How to use

Pick a reference zone — the 24-hour column header is shown in this zone's hours — and the date you're planning for (timezone offsets shift around daylight-saving boundaries, so the date matters). Adjust the working-hours start and end if your team works a non-standard schedule.

Add zones with the "Add a zone…" dropdown; you can include up to six. Each row shows the local hour in that zone for every column position. Hours shaded green are working hours, amber is the fringe (±2 hours), and grey is outside hours. Columns where every zone is green appear bold green at the top — those are the meeting windows that work for everyone. Use the × beside any zone label to remove it.

Frequently asked questions

  • Why is the date input so important?

    Timezone offsets shift around daylight-saving boundaries — for example, the gap between New York and London changes from five hours to four hours in late March, then back again in late October. Picking the correct date ensures the grid reflects the offsets that will actually apply when your meeting takes place.

  • How many time zones can I compare at once?

    Up to six. That covers most real-world distributed teams; beyond that the grid becomes hard to read and overlap windows shrink to almost nothing anyway. Remove a zone with the × beside its label if you need to add a different one.

  • What does the amber "edge" colour mean?

    Amber marks the two-hour fringe either side of working hours — 7:00–9:00 and 17:00–19:00 with the default 9–5 schedule. These slots are workable for people who flex their hours but not strictly within the standard workday. Overlap columns require every row to be green, not amber.

  • Can I change what "working hours" means?

    Yes. The two number inputs at the top let you set the working-hours start and end (0–24). Use 7–15 for an early-bird team, 10–18 for a late-start team, or any other window that matches reality. The colour shading and bold-overlap columns recalculate automatically.

  • Why does the grid not have an option to find time across days?

    It shows a single 24-hour reference day, because that's sufficient to locate the daily overlap window. For zones that are far apart (e.g. Tokyo vs Los Angeles), the overlap may not appear on the same calendar date in each zone — but the underlying instant is still a single moment in time, so the highlighted column is the moment to schedule.

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