Unix Timestamp Converter

Key Features of This Timestamp Converter

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  Bidirectional Conversion — Convert Unix timestamps to human-readable dates and human-readable dates back to Unix timestamps. Enter 1704067200 and see January 1, 2024, 00:00:00 UTC. Enter a date and time in any common format and get the corresponding timestamp. The converter handles both seconds and milliseconds — it auto-detects based on the number of digits. A 10-digit number is treated as seconds, a 13-digit number as milliseconds.
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  Live Clock with Current Timestamp — A real-time display shows the current Unix timestamp ticking upward every second. This is handy when you need the exact current timestamp for a script, an API call, or a database query. No need to open a terminal and type date +%s or fire up a Node.js REPL for Date.now(). The live clock also shows the current time in UTC and your local time zone side by side.
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  Time Zone Awareness — Unix timestamps are always UTC. But the human-readable date depends on your time zone. A timestamp of 1704067200 is January 1, 2024, at midnight in UTC, but December 31, 2023, at 7:00 PM in Eastern Time (UTC-5). The converter shows both the UTC interpretation and your local time zone interpretation for every timestamp. You can also select any time zone from the IANA database — America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo, Europe/Berlin — to see the timestamp in that zone.
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  ISO 8601 Formatting — ISO 8601 is the international standard for date and time representation: 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z for UTC, or 2024-01-01T00:00:00+09:00 for a time zone offset of +9 hours. The converter generates ISO 8601 strings from timestamps and parses them back. This format is unambiguous, sorts lexicographically, and is the preferred format for JSON APIs, XML documents, and log files. The Z suffix explicitly marks UTC, eliminating guessing about which time zone a date refers to.
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  Relative Time Display — See how far a timestamp is from the current moment — 3 days ago, 2 hours from now, 6 months ago. This relative display helps you quickly understand whether a timestamp in a log file is recent or stale, without mentally calculating the difference between two large integers. For timestamps within the last hour, the display shows minutes and seconds. For older timestamps, it switches to hours, days, or months for readability.
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  Date Arithmetic — Add or subtract seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks from a timestamp. This is useful for calculating expiration times — an API token that expires in 24 hours, a cache entry that lives for 3600 seconds, a session that times out after 30 minutes. The tool shows both the resulting timestamp and the human-readable date, so you can verify the math immediately.

How to Convert Unix Timestamps

1. 1

   Enter a Timestamp or a Date

   Paste a Unix timestamp into the input field. The tool accepts seconds (10 digits, like 1704067200), milliseconds (13 digits, like 1704067200000), and microseconds (16 digits, like 1704067200000000). It also accepts human-readable dates in most common formats: 2024-01-01, January 1 2024, 01/01/2024, 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z. If you enter a date without a time, midnight (00:00:00) is assumed. If you enter a date without a time zone, your local time zone is used — which is a common source of off-by-one-day errors when your local zone is behind UTC.

2. 2

   Check the Conversion Results

   The tool displays the converted result in multiple formats simultaneously: the Unix timestamp in seconds and milliseconds, the ISO 8601 string, the date and time in UTC, and the date and time in your local time zone. Compare these to verify you have the right moment. A common mistake is entering a local time and expecting a UTC timestamp — or the reverse. The side-by-side display makes this discrepancy obvious. Pay attention to the UTC offset shown next to your local time zone interpretation.

3. 3

   Adjust the Time Zone If Needed

   If you need to see the timestamp in a specific time zone — say, your server runs in UTC but your users are in Asia/Tokyo — select the target zone from the dropdown. The converter uses the Intl.DateTimeFormat API with IANA time zone names, which handles daylight saving transitions correctly. Tokyo does not observe daylight saving time, so its offset is always +09:00. New York switches between -05:00 (EST) and -04:00 (EDT). The tool accounts for these transitions automatically based on the date of the timestamp.

4. 4

   Perform Date Arithmetic

   If you need a timestamp for 24 hours from now — say, for setting a token expiration — enter the current timestamp and add 86400 seconds (24 x 60 x 60). Or use the arithmetic controls to add 1 day directly. The tool handles month and year boundaries correctly: adding 1 day to January 31 gives you February 1, not an invalid date. For recurring intervals, you can chain additions — start from a base timestamp and add your interval repeatedly to generate a series of future timestamps.

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   Copy the Result in Your Preferred Format

   Copy the output you need: the raw timestamp for database queries and API calls, the ISO 8601 string for log files and configuration, or the formatted date string for user-facing displays. Most REST APIs expect timestamps as integers (seconds or milliseconds) in JSON bodies, while GraphQL APIs often use ISO 8601 strings for DateTime scalars. Database systems vary — PostgreSQL's to_timestamp() takes seconds, MySQL's FROM_UNIXTIME() takes seconds, and MongoDB stores dates internally as millisecond timestamps. Match the format to your target system.

Expert Tips for Working with Timestamps

Related Tools

Timestamps are the backbone of event ordering, caching, scheduling, and debugging in software systems. The time zone converter bridges the gap between UTC storage and local-time display. The JSON formatter helps you locate and inspect timestamp fields buried in API responses. And the UUID generator creates identifiers that carry their own creation timestamps, reducing the number of fields you need to store and index. These tools form a practical toolkit for any developer working with time-sensitive data.