Timestamp Converter

Convert Unix timestamps to readable dates — or any date back to a timestamp.

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Current Unix timestamp 0 0 ms
UTC time Local time
Timestamp → Date

Date → Timestamp
Fill in the date fields above and click Convert
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What is a Unix Timestamp?

A Unix timestamp (also called Unix time, POSIX time, or epoch time) is a system for describing a point in time as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 — the "Unix epoch". It is widely used in computer systems, databases, APIs, and log files because it is a simple integer that is timezone-independent and easy to compare and store.

Most programming languages represent Unix time in seconds, but JavaScript and many APIs use milliseconds (multiply by 1000). This converter auto-detects which you've entered based on the number of digits — 10-digit values are treated as seconds, 13-digit as milliseconds.


Frequently Asked Questions

Systems that store Unix time as a signed 32-bit integer will overflow on 19 January 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC — the maximum value a signed 32-bit integer can hold. After that moment, the counter wraps around to a large negative number, typically interpreted as 13 December 1901. Modern 64-bit systems are unaffected as they can represent timestamps billions of years into the future, but embedded systems and legacy code using 32-bit integers may still be vulnerable.

JavaScript: Date.now() (ms) or Math.floor(Date.now()/1000) (seconds)
Python: import time; time.time()
PHP: time()
Go: time.Now().Unix()
SQL (MySQL): UNIX_TIMESTAMP()
SQL (PostgreSQL): EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM NOW())
Bash: date +%s

JavaScript's Date object was designed for browser use cases where sub-second precision matters — animations, user interaction timing, and UI responsiveness. Millisecond precision is a better default for these tasks than seconds. This creates the common gotcha where Date.now() returns a 13-digit number that looks like a Unix timestamp but is 1000× larger. Always divide by 1000 when comparing JS timestamps to Unix timestamps from other systems.

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