What does "business-hour overlap" mean exactly?

The number of hours per day when both countries' standard 9-to-18 local working windows are simultaneously active in UTC. Pairs with positive overlap can run synchronous meetings during normal business hours on both ends; pairs with zero overlap force at least one side to take edge-hour calls.

Why do you only show featured pairs and not every combination?

Because publishing 30 × 30 = 900 country pairs would dilute the catalog with low-intent spam. The featured list is curated for high-search-intent pairings — relocation, remote hiring, distributed-team coordination, and major business corridors. If a pair you want isn't here, the underlying city-vs-city compare hub covers any combination at finer granularity.

How is the DST footprint computed?

We count the number of UTC-offset transitions for each country in the next 12 months from today. A country with two transitions per year (spring-forward and fall-back) shows a footprint of 2; a country that's abolished DST shows 0. Countries with multiple time zones use the capital city's zone as the canonical proxy.

What are the overlapping public holidays?

Calendar dates that are public holidays in both countries simultaneously — the days when most teams on both sides are off. New Year's Day appears for almost every pair; others depend on shared cultural or religious traditions. Use these as no-go dates for cross-country launches.

Country comparison

Country vs country

For each featured pair: real business-hour overlap, DST footprint for the next 12 months, and side-by-side time snapshots. Useful for remote hiring, team coordination, and relocation decisions.

Featured pairs

All 30 countries

United States
Canada
Mexico
Brazil
Argentina
United Kingdom
Ireland
France
Germany
Spain
Italy
Netherlands
Sweden
Portugal
Russia
United Arab Emirates
Saudi Arabia
Israel
India
China
Japan
South Korea
Singapore
Thailand
Australia
New Zealand
South Africa
Egypt
Nigeria
Kenya

Only curated pairs are published to avoid spam; pick any featured pair above or use the full city-vs-city compare hub for finer-grained choices.

How a country comparison works

What a country-to-country compare measures

Country comparison answers a coarser question than the city-vs-city compare hub: not "can these two cities meet at 3 PM" but "do these two countries line up well enough to hire, relocate, or run a distributed team across". Each part below is the generic method; open any featured pair for that pair's heatmap and shared-holiday list.

Timezone span

A country can sit in one timezone or stretch across several. Country comparison treats each country through a reference city's IANA zone as the canonical proxy, then notes where a country spans multiple zones so you know the published offset is one slice of a wider range, not the whole picture.

Reference-city times

Rather than picking an arbitrary point, country comparison anchors the clock to a major reference city for each country. That gives a stable, repeatable reference point for the side-by-side time snapshot and keeps the comparison consistent across every featured pair.

Business overlap at the country level

Country-level overlap counts the hours per day when both countries' standard 9-to-18 working windows are simultaneously open in UTC. It tells you whether a relocation or hiring decision lands two teams in a workable shared window or forces edge-hour calls on one side.

DST footprint and shared holidays

The DST footprint counts each country's UTC-offset transitions over the next 12 months — 2 for a country with spring-forward and fall-back, 0 for one that has abolished daylight saving. Overlapping public holidays flag the calendar dates when both countries are off, useful as no-go dates for a cross-country launch.

Because a country can cross several time zones, every country here is compared through a major reference city's IANA zone as a canonical proxy. For finer, single-city precision, drop down to the city-level compare hub instead.

Country-compare method

How we calculate this: Each country is represented by a major reference city's IANA timezone as a canonical proxy. The comparison renders side-by-side reference-city times, counts the hours per day when both countries' standard 9-to-18 working windows overlap in UTC, counts each country's UTC-offset transitions over the next 12 months as the DST footprint, and lists calendar dates that are public holidays in both countries.
Data sources: IANA Time Zone Database (tzdata) for reference-city offsets and daylight-saving rules; a curated catalog of comparable countries; public-holiday data for the overlapping-holiday list. Date and offset math uses date-fns-tz applied to IANA zone IDs.
Update cadence: The country-compare hub revalidates daily. Offset and DST rules track the IANA tzdata release cycle and refresh when the application is rebuilt against a newer tzdata version.

Questions

FAQ

What does "business-hour overlap" mean exactly?: The number of hours per day when both countries' standard 9-to-18 local working windows are simultaneously active in UTC. Pairs with positive overlap can run synchronous meetings during normal business hours on both ends; pairs with zero overlap force at least one side to take edge-hour calls.
Why do you only show featured pairs and not every combination?: Because publishing 30 × 30 = 900 country pairs would dilute the catalog with low-intent spam. The featured list is curated for high-search-intent pairings — relocation, remote hiring, distributed-team coordination, and major business corridors. If a pair you want isn't here, the underlying city-vs-city compare hub covers any combination at finer granularity.
How is the DST footprint computed?: We count the number of UTC-offset transitions for each country in the next 12 months from today. A country with two transitions per year (spring-forward and fall-back) shows a footprint of 2; a country that's abolished DST shows 0. Countries with multiple time zones use the capital city's zone as the canonical proxy.
What are the overlapping public holidays?: Calendar dates that are public holidays in both countries simultaneously — the days when most teams on both sides are off. New Year's Day appears for almost every pair; others depend on shared cultural or religious traditions. Use these as no-go dates for cross-country launches.