Current UTC time now (GMT / Zulu)
The current UTC time, ticking live — with the ISO 8601 string, the Unix timestamp, and your own local time and offset. UTC, GMT and Zulu time are the same clock; tap any value to copy it. No ads.
Why UTC is the reference clock
Coordinated Universal Time is the standard the whole world sets its clocks by. Every time zone is defined as an offset from UTC — New York is UTC−5 in winter, Tokyo is UTC+9, India is UTC+5:30 — so UTC is the fixed point they all hang off. Crucially, it never changes for daylight saving and never drifts with the seasons, which makes it the only sane choice for logging events, coordinating systems and talking about an instant that means the same thing everywhere.
The clock above updates several times a second and shows UTC three ways developers actually need it: the plain wall-clock time, the full ISO 8601 string with a trailing Z, and the Unix timestamp. Below that is your own local time and current offset, read live from your device — including whatever daylight saving is in force right now — so you can see at a glance how far you sit from the reference. Tap any of the values to copy it straight to your clipboard.
UTC, GMT and Zulu are worth untangling. GMT is the older, astronomy-based mean solar time at the Greenwich meridian; UTC is its modern successor, disciplined by atomic clocks and nudged with occasional leap seconds to stay within a second of it. "Zulu" is simply the aviation and military name for the same zero-offset time. In practice they line up, but when precision matters — in code, in standards, in a distributed system — UTC is the term to reach for.
FAQ
Is UTC the same as GMT?
For everyday purposes, yes — they show the same time. Technically UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is an atomic-clock standard kept within 0.9 seconds of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, an astronomical reference) using leap seconds. Aviation and the military call it 'Zulu' time, written with a Z.
Does UTC change for daylight saving?
No. UTC never observes daylight saving and never shifts — that's the whole point of it. Local times move relative to UTC when clocks change, but UTC itself is fixed, which is why it's used as the global reference.
What is my offset from UTC?
The panel above shows your current offset (for example UTC+01:00), read live from your device, so it already includes any daylight saving in effect where you are right now.
What does the Z in a timestamp mean?
A trailing Z in an ISO 8601 timestamp (like 2026-07-24T10:00:00Z) means the time is in UTC — 'Zulu' time, zero offset. It's the unambiguous way to write an instant that any system can parse.