Meeting Planning
The Best Time to Schedule a Meeting Across Different Timezones
Concrete guidance on the fairest meeting slots for common timezone pairings like US–India and US–Europe.
· 6 min read
Some timezone pairings have an obvious sweet spot; others require a compromise. Here are practical defaults for the most common cross-border combinations.
US East ↔ Europe
Mid-morning US Eastern (8–11am) is mid-afternoon to early-evening in Europe. This is one of the friendliest overlaps and rarely needs anyone to stretch.
US ↔ India
The kind overlap is early morning US (7–9am ET) which is evening in India (5:30–7:30pm IST). US West to India is harder — early morning Pacific lands late evening in India.
Europe ↔ India
Late morning to early afternoon in Europe overlaps neatly with afternoon-to-evening in India. One of the easier wide-span pairings.
US West ↔ Australia
There is almost no shared working day. Afternoon in California is the following morning in Sydney — workable, but it always crosses a date boundary, so double-check the day.
General rule
Aim for the earliest comfortable hour for the western party, which tends to be the latest comfortable hour for the eastern one. A meeting planner makes the trade-off visual.