IST to UTC converter
UTC is 5 hours 30 minutes behind India, every day of the year. Neither side ever changes its clocks, so this is one conversion you can learn once and keep.
UTC is 5 hours 30 minutes behind India.
Where Indians meet UTC
Hardly anyone’s wall clock shows UTC, but servers, exchanges, contests and global teams publish times in it. For anyone in India the maths never changes: take off 5 hours 30 minutes to go to UTC, add them to come back.
Scheduling jobs in UTC
Cloud schedulers, CI pipelines and most servers read cron times as UTC.
- Run at 9 AM IST:
30 3 * * *(3:30 AM UTC) - Run at midnight IST:
30 18 * * *(6:30 PM UTC, the day before) - Run at 6 PM IST:
30 12 * * *(12:30 PM UTC)
Because neither side has daylight saving, these never need touching twice a year, unlike cron jobs meant for the US or Europe.
Reading logs and ISO timestamps
A timestamp ending in Z is UTC; one ending in +05:30 is already Indian time.
2026-10-05T14:30:00Z= 8:00 PM IST on 5 October2026-10-05T20:00:00+05:30is the same instant written in IST- An error at
20:10Zhappened at 1:40 AM (next day) IST
Any UTC time from 18:30 onwards is already tomorrow in India, so check the date as well as the hour.
Crypto and trading days
Most crypto exchanges and charting tools start the day at 00:00 UTC.
- The daily candle closes and opens at 5:30 AM IST
- The weekly candle turns over on Monday at 5:30 AM IST
- A 12:00 UTC funding or settlement time is 5:30 PM IST
So in India the “crypto day” begins at dawn, not at midnight.
Contests, webinars and launches listed in UTC
Global events often publish a single UTC time and leave the conversion to you.
- A 14:35 UTC programming contest starts at 8:05 PM IST
- A 16:00 UTC webinar is 9:30 PM IST
- A 02:00 UTC release is 7:30 AM IST, in time for your morning
Why it never changes, and the half-hour trick
UTC is the world’s reference clock and does not observe daylight saving time. India does not observe it either. With neither side moving, the gap is exactly 5 hours 30 minutes on every date, which is why this page needs only one column in its table while most converters need two.
The half hour is what trips people up. Every whole UTC hour becomes a half hour in India: 10:00 UTC is 15:30 IST. Going the other way, a quick method is to subtract 6 hours, then add 30 minutes: 9:00 PM IST minus 6 is 3:00 PM, plus 30 minutes is 3:30 PM UTC.
Writing Indian time in software and invites
“IST” is not unique. Israel Standard Time and Irish Standard Time use the same three letters, so a system that guesses from the abbreviation can pick the wrong one. When you set up software, a calendar or a database, use the time zone name Asia/Kolkata (older systems may show Asia/Calcutta, which is the same zone) or the offset +05:30.
India to UTC, all 24 hours
One table works for the whole year. UTC is shown in both 12-hour and 24-hour form, since most systems print it in 24-hour time. Shaded rows are a typical Indian office day.
| India (IST) | UTC12-hour | UTC24-hour |
|---|---|---|
| 12:00 AM (midnight) | 6:30 PM prev. day | 18:30 prev. day |
| 1:00 AM | 7:30 PM prev. day | 19:30 prev. day |
| 2:00 AM | 8:30 PM prev. day | 20:30 prev. day |
| 3:00 AM | 9:30 PM prev. day | 21:30 prev. day |
| 4:00 AM | 10:30 PM prev. day | 22:30 prev. day |
| 5:00 AM | 11:30 PM prev. day | 23:30 prev. day |
| 6:00 AM | 12:30 AM | 00:30 |
| 7:00 AM | 1:30 AM | 01:30 |
| 8:00 AM | 2:30 AM | 02:30 |
| 9:00 AM | 3:30 AM | 03:30 |
| 10:00 AM | 4:30 AM | 04:30 |
| 11:00 AM | 5:30 AM | 05:30 |
| 12:00 PM (noon) | 6:30 AM | 06:30 |
| 1:00 PM | 7:30 AM | 07:30 |
| 2:00 PM | 8:30 AM | 08:30 |
| 3:00 PM | 9:30 AM | 09:30 |
| 4:00 PM | 10:30 AM | 10:30 |
| 5:00 PM | 11:30 AM | 11:30 |
| 6:00 PM | 12:30 PM | 12:30 |
| 7:00 PM | 1:30 PM | 13:30 |
| 8:00 PM | 2:30 PM | 14:30 |
| 9:00 PM | 3:30 PM | 15:30 |
| 10:00 PM | 4:30 PM | 16:30 |
| 11:00 PM | 5:30 PM | 17:30 |
“prev. day”: before 5:30 AM IST, UTC is still on the previous date.
Quick answers
What is 9 AM IST in UTC?
3:30 AM UTC, or 03:30 in 24-hour time, on the same date.
How do I convert IST to UTC?
Subtract 5 hours 30 minutes. If the result is before midnight, the UTC date is the day before. This works on every date because neither IST nor UTC uses daylight saving time.
What is midnight IST in UTC?
6:30 PM UTC (18:30) on the previous day.
What time is 00:00 UTC in India?
5:30 AM IST, on the same date. This is when most crypto exchanges start their trading day.
Is IST the same as UTC+5:30 and GMT+5:30?
Yes. India Standard Time is UTC+5:30 all year, which is also written GMT+5:30. In software its time zone name is Asia/Kolkata.
Does the IST to UTC difference ever change?
No. India has not used daylight saving time in decades and UTC never does, so the difference is always 5 hours 30 minutes.