What is the difference between UTC and AEST?

AEST is 10 hours ahead of UTC. UTC means Coordinated Universal Time at UTC+0, and AEST means Australian Eastern Standard Time at UTC+10.

Which time zone does this page use for UTC?

UTC. An abbreviation is not a time zone — it is a label a zone wears for part of the year — so every calculation here uses a named IANA zone and says which one. If you are writing code, use UTC rather than the string "UTC".

Does AEST mean anything else?

Yes: Queensland, which never leaves it at UTC+10. Queensland stays on AEST all year while New South Wales and Victoria move to AEDT, so for four months Brisbane and Sydney disagree by an hour.

Is UTC a daylight saving abbreviation?

No. UTC is the standard-time abbreviation. When daylight saving is in force, the same zone uses a different one.

UTC to AEST

Converting UTC to AEST means moving from UTC+0 to UTC+10 — a shift of 10 hours ahead.

Convert a time

From

Date

Time

Converted time

—

The converter needs JavaScript to run. Everything below — offsets, daylight saving dates and the hour-by-hour table — is part of the page and works without it.

Hour by hour

Computed on a date when UTC is genuinely in force — using today would be wrong for half the year, because a standard-time abbreviation does not exist in summer.

UTC	AEST
00:00	11:00
01:00	12:00
02:00	13:00
03:00	14:00
04:00	15:00
05:00	16:00
06:00	17:00
07:00	18:00
08:00	19:00
09:00	20:00
10:00	21:00
11:00	22:00
12:00	23:00
13:00	00:00next day
14:00	01:00next day
15:00	02:00next day
16:00	03:00next day
17:00	04:00next day
18:00	05:00next day
19:00	06:00next day
20:00	07:00next day
21:00	08:00next day
22:00	09:00next day
23:00	10:00next day

What these abbreviations actually are

	UTC	AEST
Full name	Coordinated Universal Time	Australian Eastern Standard Time
Representative zone	UTC	Australia/Sydney
Offset	UTC+0	UTC+10
Seasonal	Standard time	Standard time
Zone changes in 2026	0	2
Other meanings	None in common use	1

Common questions

What is the difference between UTC and AEST?: AEST is 10 hours ahead of UTC. UTC means Coordinated Universal Time at UTC+0, and AEST means Australian Eastern Standard Time at UTC+10.
Which time zone does this page use for UTC?: UTC. An abbreviation is not a time zone — it is a label a zone wears for part of the year — so every calculation here uses a named IANA zone and says which one. If you are writing code, use UTC rather than the string "UTC".
Does AEST mean anything else?: Yes: Queensland, which never leaves it at UTC+10. Queensland stays on AEST all year while New South Wales and Victoria move to AEDT, so for four months Brisbane and Sydney disagree by an hour.
Is UTC a daylight saving abbreviation?: No. UTC is the standard-time abbreviation. When daylight saving is in force, the same zone uses a different one.