Unix Timestamp Converter – Epoch Time to Date and Back

How to use the Unix timestamp converter

Timestamp to date:

1. Choose Timestamp → date.
2. Paste a timestamp in seconds or milliseconds. It starts with the current timestamp.

You’ll see the date and time in your time zone and in UTC, the ISO 8601 form, and a relative time such as “3 days ago”.

Date to timestamp:

1. Choose Date → timestamp.
2. Pick the date and time, and whether that time is in your time zone or UTC.

You’ll see the timestamp in seconds and milliseconds and the ISO 8601 date.

How the conversion works

A day is 86,400 seconds, so dividing a timestamp by 86,400 gives the number of days since 1970.

Examples

Timestamps in different languages

• JavaScript: Date.now() returns milliseconds; new Date(ts * 1000) converts seconds.
• Python: time.time() returns seconds; datetime.fromtimestamp(ts, tz=timezone.utc) converts.
• PHP: time() and date('c', $ts).
• SQL: UNIX_TIMESTAMP() in MySQL, EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM now()) in PostgreSQL.
• Shell: date +%s, and date -d @1700000000 on Linux.

Leap seconds and time zones

Unix time ignores leap seconds: every day is treated as exactly 86,400 seconds, which keeps calculations simple. A timestamp also has no time zone — it is the same number everywhere at the same instant. The time zone only matters when you turn it into a calendar date and clock time, which is why the converter shows both your local time and UTC.

When you convert a date into a timestamp, be clear about which time zone the date is in. 9:00 am in New York and 9:00 am in Nairobi are eight hours apart, so they give different timestamps. Use the UTC option for times taken from logs and servers.

Timestamps in milliseconds are common in JavaScript, Java and many web APIs, while databases and Unix tools usually use seconds.

Tips

• Store times in UTC and convert to local time only for display.
• Check the units when an API date looks wrong — a date in 1970 usually means seconds were read as milliseconds, and a date tens of thousands of years ahead means the reverse.
• ISO 8601 strings such as 2026-11-08T09:00:00Z are easier for humans to read and also sort correctly as text.

For converting a local time between cities, use the time zone converter. To inspect token expiry times, the JWT decoder shows them as dates. Everything runs in your browser.