Unix Timestamp
Convert Unix timestamps to readable dates and back, with a live epoch clock ticking in seconds and milliseconds.
Current Unix time
Timestamp to date
Date to timestamp
Why everything runs on epoch time
Under the hood, almost every computer clock counts a single number: seconds since midnight UTC on 1 January 1970. Storing time as one integer sidesteps the mess of time zones, daylight saving and calendar formats. Two servers on opposite sides of the world agree on the exact same timestamp for a given instant, and only translate it into a human date when they need to show it to a person.
Seconds versus milliseconds
The classic Unix convention is seconds, which today gives a 10-digit number. JavaScript's
Date.now() and many web APIs use milliseconds, a 13-digit number. Get the two
confused and your date lands in 1970 or the year 50,000. This converter looks at the magnitude
of what you paste and tells you which it assumed, so you never have to divide by 1000 in your
head.
Useful reference points
- 0 - 1 January 1970, 00:00:00 UTC (the epoch)
- 1000000000 - 9 September 2001 (the billionth second)
- 1500000000 - 14 July 2017
- 2147483647 - 19 January 2038, the 32-bit signed limit
Working with dates in other ways? The date calculator counts the days between two dates, the time zone converter compares cities, and the age calculator turns a birth date into an exact age.