Atlas vs There: seeing teammates’ time vs actually booking the meeting

Both apps live in your Mac menu bar, both run locally, and both spare you the mental arithmetic of "what time is it for her right now?" The difference is what happens next. There is built to show. Atlas is built to act.

What is There?

There (there.pm) is a well-liked, people-centric Mac app. You add your teammates, and it lists them by name and photo with their current local time, so a single glance tells you who is asleep, who is mid-afternoon, and who is just logging on. It is Mac-only, needs no sign-up, runs entirely on your machine, and is free.

Its strength is awareness. If your day is mostly about not pinging a colleague at 3 AM their time, There answers that question instantly and elegantly. For a lot of distributed teams, that is genuinely all they need, and at zero cost it is hard to argue with. The photos help too: seeing a face next to a time turns an abstract offset into a real person whose evening you might be about to interrupt.

What is Atlas?

Atlas is a native macOS menu-bar app for scheduling across time zones. You pin teammates and cities on a world map with live local times. It shades each person’s working hours, then auto-suggests the best overlapping moment when everyone is awake and at their desk. One tap adds that meeting to your calendar in every attendee’s correct local time, with daylight saving handled for you.

A Quick Check mode opens with a keyboard shortcut for fast "is now a good time?" glances, and you can save groups and teams. It is keyboard-first, supports light and dark mode, and is private: no account, nothing leaves your Mac. Atlas is a one-time purchase of $9.99 — no subscription.

How do they compare?

The honest framing: There is a passive display, and a very good one. Atlas is an active scheduler. Here is how they line up on the dimensions that actually matter.

Where There is the better choice

Be honest about this: if you mostly need to avoid bad-timing pings rather than book formal meetings, There is the right tool. It is free, it requires nothing, and its single-purpose design is part of its charm. A solo founder messaging a couple of contractors, or anyone who simply wants ambient awareness of a distributed team, will be well served and will not miss a scheduler they never use.

Where Atlas earns its $9.99

The moment seeing the time is only step one, the maths starts again: find the overlap, convert it into each person’s local time, remember who has already shifted for daylight saving, then type it into a calendar invite. Atlas collapses that into a recommendation and a single tap. Over a month of cross-zone scheduling, that is a lot of small errors avoided and minutes saved — for a one-time price, with no subscription and no account.

It also scales with the meeting. Pinning two people is easy enough to do in your head; pinning five across London, New York, Bangalore and Sydney is where the overlap genuinely needs computing. Atlas shades every working window at once and surfaces the slot that costs the fewest people their evening or early morning, so the compromise is visible rather than guessed. Save those people as a group and the next meeting is a few keystrokes away.

If you want the full picture of how Atlas finds the overlap, see how to find the best meeting time across time zones, or browse more guides on the Atlas blog.

So which should you use?

1. You want a free, glanceable view of where your team is. Use There. It does this beautifully at no cost.
2. You regularly schedule and book meetings across zones. Use Atlas. It recommends the time and writes it to your calendar, correctly, in one tap.
3. You value privacy on either. Both run locally with no account, so you are covered whichever you pick.