Free Unix Timestamp Converter
Convert Unix epoch to human-readable date/time, or date to Unix timestamp. Shows local time and UTC. Updates live.
Unix timestamps represent moments in time as the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. They are used universally in databases, APIs, log files and server systems because they are timezone-independent integers that are easy to calculate with. Enter a timestamp to see the corresponding date and time, or pick a date to get the epoch value.
⏱ Timestamp → Date
📅 Date → Timestamp
Notable timestamps
| Date | Unix Timestamp | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1970-01-01 00:00:00 | 0 | The Unix epoch (origin) |
| 2001-09-09 01:46:40 | 1,000,000,000 | 1 billion seconds |
| 2009-01-03 18:15:05 | 1,231,006,505 | Bitcoin genesis block |
| 2033-05-18 03:33:20 | 2,000,000,000 | 2 billion seconds |
| 2038-01-19 03:14:07 | 2,147,483,647 | 32-bit integer max (Y2K38) |
What Is a Unix Timestamp?
A Unix timestamp (also called epoch time or POSIX time) is the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC — a moment known as the Unix epoch. It is the standard way computers and programming languages represent moments in time: databases, APIs, log files and server systems almost universally use Unix timestamps for time storage and comparison.
Because it is a simple integer, Unix time is easy to calculate with: subtracting two timestamps gives the duration between them in seconds. Converting to milliseconds (multiply by 1000) is common in JavaScript. The current 10-digit Unix timestamp will reach 2,147,483,647 on January 19, 2038 — the so-called Y2K38 problem for systems using 32-bit integers.
Epoch Time, Time Zones and the 2038 Problem
A Unix timestamp counts seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970. Its value is that it is unambiguous: a single integer, always UTC, with no time zone, no daylight saving and no locale formatting to misinterpret. This is why systems store timestamps and convert to local time only at the moment of display — the conversion is a presentation concern, and doing it earlier destroys information.
The most frequent practical error is a factor of one thousand. Unix timestamps are conventionally in seconds, but JavaScript's Date.now() and several other environments return milliseconds. Feed a millisecond value to something expecting seconds and you land tens of thousands of years in the future; make the opposite mistake and you land in January 1970. A quick sanity check: a current timestamp in seconds has 10 digits, in milliseconds 13.
The count also deliberately ignores leap seconds. A Unix day is always exactly 86,400 seconds, so on the rare occasions a leap second is inserted, the timestamp repeats or stretches a value rather than incrementing cleanly. This keeps date arithmetic simple at the cost of drifting slightly from astronomical time — a trade almost every system accepts.
The 2038 problem follows from storage width. A signed 32-bit integer holds a maximum of 2,147,483,647, which as a second count is reached at 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038; one second later it overflows to a large negative number, placing the system in December 1901. Modern platforms use 64-bit timestamps and are unaffected for a span longer than the age of the universe, but embedded devices, older file formats and legacy database columns can still carry 32-bit fields. If you work with dates far in the future — mortgage terms, long-dated contracts, retention policies — it is worth confirming the width of the column you are storing them in.