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I'm free at around 7PM.

Is it correct?

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There's nothing wrong with using the present indicative instead of future tense when nailing down an action to a time or speaking of things in the future as if they have already occurred. There is even a literary device known as prolepsis, which deals with exactly this.

How often have you heard someone in a movie or TV show say:

Reach for that gun and you're a dead man.

That is one example of prolepsis. Your example is another.

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There’s an argument that “at around” is not strictly correct, as either you’re free at 7 p.m. or around 7 p.m., but not both.

But it’s certainly widely used colloquially.

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  • good to know, thx.
    – IAdapter
    Jan 6, 2011 at 14:20
  • Ther's another argument that 'free around seven' would mean from (say) ten to seven to ten past, while 'free at around seven' means from circa 7 o'clock onwards. But in reality it all depends on context.
    – Tim Lymington
    Dec 28, 2011 at 19:46
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In everyday usage, I say "I'll be free around seven."

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It's understandable, and would probably be used by most native speakers too.

It would be more (temporally) correct if you said "I will be free at around 7PM", but I'm not sure that anyone would really pick up on the difference.

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