Unix Timestamp Converter — Date & Time

Convert Unix timestamps

Convert between Unix timestamps (seconds since Jan 1, 1970) and human-readable dates. Get the current timestamp or convert any date to its timestamp equivalent. Essential for developers working with APIs and databases.

The converter parses Unix timestamps (seconds since the epoch, January 1, 1970 UTC) and formats them into human-readable date strings using the Intl.DateTimeFormat API. It automatically detects whether input is in seconds (10 digits) or milliseconds (13 digits). The reverse direction uses Date.getTime() to generate timestamps from date picker input.

Timestamp conversion is essential for debugging API responses that return epoch timestamps, analyzing server logs where events are logged as Unix time, working with databases that store dates as integers, coordinating across time zones in distributed systems, and calculating durations between events in monitoring dashboards.

Always store timestamps in UTC and convert to local time only for display — this prevents timezone bugs when users travel or servers are in different regions. Be aware that JavaScript timestamps use milliseconds while most other languages and databases use seconds — a common source of off-by-1000x errors. For dates before 1970, Unix timestamps are negative numbers.

Programming language date libraries (moment.js, date-fns, Python's datetime) handle timestamp conversion programmatically. Websites like epochconverter.com offer similar functionality. This tool provides instant bidirectional conversion with timezone display and supports both seconds and milliseconds formats — useful for quick debugging without writing code or switching to a terminal.