Working with Unix Timestamps
Unix timestamps (epoch time) count the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC. They're the standard way to represent time in databases, APIs, log files, and programming languages. Our converter translates between timestamps and human-readable dates in both directions.
The tool auto-detects whether your input is in seconds (10 digits, standard Unix) or milliseconds (13 digits, JavaScript's Date.now()). This matters because using the wrong unit is one of the most common timestamp bugs — a date that shows as 1970 usually means milliseconds were treated as seconds.
Use this when reading timestamps from database records, parsing JWT expiration claims, debugging time-related bugs in APIs, or setting cache TTLs and token lifetimes. The converter shows the date in multiple formats (UTC, local time, ISO 8601) for convenience.
Tips
- Current Unix timestamp:
date +%s(terminal),Date.now()/1000(JavaScript),time.time()(Python). - JavaScript uses milliseconds, most other languages use seconds. Divide/multiply by 1000 when converting.
- Timestamps before 1970 are negative numbers. Most systems handle this correctly, but test edge cases.
- The 32-bit timestamp overflow (Y2038 problem) happens on January 19, 2038. Use 64-bit integers for future-proof timestamps.