Timestamp Converter

Timestamp Converter

The clock at the top, Right now, shows the current moment as Unix time, seconds, Milliseconds, ISO 8601, UTC and Your clock. Click Use this moment to convert it.

To convert something else, paste a timestamp or a date into Timestamp or date, or use Or pick a date and time. Every row of the result has its own copy button.

The conversion runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Example

1760000000, with Time zone set to America/New_York:

The notes say the number was read as seconds because it has ten digits. They also point out that New York was on summer time that day (EDT, UTC−4), which is why the local time is four hours behind UTC rather than five.

You also get the time in words for the chosen zone and for your own clock, how long ago it was, and ready-to-paste lines for JavaScript, Python, PHP and MySQL.

Seconds, milliseconds or something smaller?

A timestamp doesn’t say which unit it’s in. With Read a number as set to Detect by length, the tool decides from the number of digits. The notes say which unit it chose and why.

Getting the unit wrong gives very recognisable results. Read seconds as milliseconds, and 1760000000 becomes 21 January 1970. Read milliseconds as seconds, and you land somewhere around the year 57,700.

Length is a reliable guide for recent dates. Seconds have had ten digits since 9 September 2001, and will until the year 2286. For older moments, or numbers that aren’t timestamps at all, choose the unit yourself, or pick A date, never a timestamp.

Dates without a time zone

A date like 2025-10-18 14:20 doesn’t say where it was written, so it’s read in the zone selected under Time zone. That starts as your own, and the notes tell you a zone was assumed. The list contains all 418 time zones your browser knows.

Some dates are ambiguous in a different way. 10/05/2025 is 5 October in the US but 10 May in most of Europe, so the notes flag it. Dates written with dots, like 18.10.2025, are always day first. If you control the format, 2025-10-05 (ISO 8601) is the one nobody misreads.

Daylight saving time

Clock changes produce local times that are tricky to convert:

• An hour that happens twice. On 2 November 2025, New York’s clocks went back from 2:00 to 1:00, so 1:30 happened twice, first in EDT and then in EST. The tool uses the first one: 05:30 UTC.
• An hour that never happens. On 9 March 2025, New York’s clocks jumped from 2:00 to 3:00, so 2:30 never existed. The tool moves forward to 3:30 EDT, which is 07:30 UTC.

2038, and dates before 1970

Unix time counts seconds from 1 January 1970, 00:00 UTC. Systems that store it as a signed 32-bit number run out at 2147483647, which is 19 January 2038, 03:14:07 UTC. One second later the counter wraps around to 13 December 1901.

Most modern systems use 64 bits and are fine. But MySQL’s TIMESTAMP column type, for one, still ends at exactly that second. The notes warn you about any moment past it, so you can check what will store it.

Dates before 1970 are negative numbers. The Apollo 11 landing, on 20 July 1969 at 20:17:40 UTC, is -14182940. Some software refuses negative timestamps, and the notes point them out for that reason.

Pasting into code

The four languages handle timestamps slightly differently, and each difference is a common source of bugs:

• JavaScript works in milliseconds, so seconds need * 1000. Without it, you get January 1970.
• Python’s datetime.fromtimestamp() returns local time unless you pass a time zone.
• PHP’s date() uses the server’s default zone.
• MySQL’s FROM_UNIXTIME() uses the session’s time zone, and returns NULL for negative values.

The snippets give you a working line for the moment shown, ready to paste.

Seconds into days, hours and minutes

The second part of the page turns a length of time into something readable. Enter a number of seconds, or write it the way you’d say it:

ISO 8601 durations are the form APIs and config files expect, such as PT30S for a 30-second timeout.

The How long is a table lists the usual units. Months and years vary in length, so the table uses averages. A year is 365.2425 days, or 31,556,952 seconds, because the Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years every 400 years. A month is a twelfth of that, 2,629,746 seconds.

Some converters list 31,556,926 seconds instead. That figure is the solar year (365.24219 days), which is useful in astronomy but isn’t how calendars count.

FAQ

Is a timestamp different in each time zone?

No. Unix time is the same number everywhere at the same moment. Only the way it’s displayed changes, which is why the result shows both UTC and your chosen zone.

Does Unix time include leap seconds?

No. Every Unix day is exactly 86,400 seconds, and leap seconds are ignored.

Why does the ISO week show a year?

Because the week’s year can differ from the date’s. ISO weeks start on Monday, and week 1 is the week containing the year’s first Thursday. So 31 December 1969 belongs to week 1 of 1970.

How do I count the time between two dates?

Use the Between Dates Calculator. To add or subtract lengths of time, use the Time Duration Calculator. To schedule something on a timetable, use the Cron Expression Generator.

Is anything sent to a server?

No. All the conversion happens in your browser.