What this does
Enter a time in UTC and read it in India Standard Time. This is the easy one: IST is a fixed UTC+5:30 with no daylight saving, so you always just add 5 hours and 30 minutes. 12:00 UTC is 5:30 PM IST, every day of the year.
Quick UTC → IST reference
- 00:00 UTC → 5:30 AM IST
- 06:00 UTC → 11:30 AM IST
- 12:00 UTC → 5:30 PM IST
- 18:30 UTC → 12:00 AM IST (midnight, next day)
- 23:00 UTC → 4:30 AM IST (next day)
Why the odd half-hour offset?
When India standardized its time after independence, it chose a single national zone centered on roughly 82.5° E longitude — which works out to exactly 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of UTC. A single zone for a country spanning ~28° of longitude is a deliberate trade-off: simplicity over solar accuracy. A handful of zones worldwide (Iran, parts of Australia, Nepal at +5:45) share this half- or quarter-hour quirk.
Reading server logs and timestamps in IST
Most servers, databases, and APIs record time in UTC (often marked with a
trailing Z, as in 2025-06-15T12:00:00Z). To see
when an event happened in India, enter the UTC date and time above — the
+5:30 is applied for you, including rolling over to the next day for
late-UTC times.
Is UTC to IST the same as GMT to IST?
Numerically yes — GMT and UTC are both the zero meridian, so "GMT to IST" gives the same +5:30. The only caveat is if someone says "GMT" meaning UK local time, which becomes UTC+1 in the British summer; then it'd be +4:30 to IST for part of the year. For the fixed reference, this page is exact.
Need the US side too?
See IST to EST for India to US Eastern, or the timezone tool to compare UTC, IST, and US zones together.