Compare working hours across time zones and find the window where everyone can meet without anyone taking a call at midnight. Add as many locations as you need — the grid shows local time for each against a shared UTC scale.
Green marks a comfortable working hour of 9:00 to 17:00. Amber marks an early or late hour that is workable occasionally. Grey is outside reasonable hours.
Working across time zones as a freelancer
If you work with clients in the Gulf, Europe and North America at the same time, you will discover fairly quickly that no single hour suits all three. The gap between Dubai and the US west coast is around twelve hours, which means one side is always outside normal hours.
This is a scheduling problem with a structural answer rather than a willpower one.
- Group clients by region. Handle European clients in your afternoon and American clients in your evening, rather than scattering calls through the day.
- Default to asynchronous. A recorded walkthrough or a written update removes most of the need for a shared hour at all, and it scales far better than calls.
- Rotate the inconvenience. If a recurring call has to sit outside someone’s hours, move it around so the same person is not always taking it at 6am.
- Publish your hours. State them clearly at the start of a project. Clients respect stated boundaries far more than assumed ones.
Two things that catch people out
Daylight saving shifts. Europe and North America change clocks on different dates, and many countries do not change at all. That creates a few weeks each year where a standing meeting silently moves by an hour for one side. This tool uses current offsets, so check again after a clock change.
Different weekends. Several countries in the Gulf region historically observed a Friday-Saturday weekend, and practice varies by country and sector. Confirm rather than assume, particularly when agreeing deadlines that fall over a weekend.
When quoting international clients, remember that time zone overlap is a real cost. Work requiring live availability outside your normal hours is worth pricing accordingly — the freelance rate calculator helps you work out what that should be.