How to use
- 1See the current Unix time in seconds and milliseconds at the top.
- 2Paste a timestamp; seconds or milliseconds are detected automatically.
- 3Read it as local time, UTC, ISO 8601, RFC 2822 and relative time (“3 hours ago”).
- 4Or pick a date and time to get its timestamp.
What a Unix timestamp is
Unix time counts the seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 (the Unix epoch), ignoring leap seconds. It is time-zone independent, which makes it the standard way to store and compare times in databases, logs, APIs and JWT exp/iat claims. A timestamp of 1,800,000,000 is 15 January 2027, 08:00 UTC.
Seconds or milliseconds?
Current timestamps in seconds have 10 digits; in milliseconds, 13. Unix tools, PHP, Python’s time.time() and most databases use seconds; JavaScript’s Date.now() and Java’s System.currentTimeMillis() use milliseconds. Mixing them up is a classic bug that produces dates in 1970 or the year 57,000. This converter detects the unit automatically from the length.
Time zones and the year 2038 problem
A timestamp is always UTC; time zones only matter when you display it. Store UTC and convert at display time to avoid daylight-saving bugs. Systems that store Unix time as a signed 32-bit integer overflow at 2,147,483,647 — 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 — so make sure database columns and embedded systems use 64-bit time.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get the current timestamp in code?
JavaScript: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000). Python: int(time.time()). PHP: time(). Bash: date +%s. SQL (MySQL): UNIX_TIMESTAMP().
Why is my converted date in 1970?
You probably treated a seconds timestamp as milliseconds (or vice versa), or the value is 0/null.
What is ISO 8601?
The international date format, e.g. 2026-10-06T14:30:00Z, where Z means UTC. It sorts correctly as text and is the safest format for APIs.
Do Unix timestamps include leap seconds?
No. Unix time treats every day as exactly 86,400 seconds.
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