Unix timestamp converter
In software, time is often stored as a Unix timestamp — a number of seconds since 1970 that humans cannot read. This tool converts a timestamp into a readable date-time in real time (showing local and UTC), converts a date back into a timestamp, and shows a live current timestamp.
How to use
- Timestamp to date: enter a 10-digit (seconds) or 13-digit (milliseconds) timestamp to see the date instantly.
- Date to timestamp: pick a date-time to get the matching Unix timestamp.
- Copy the live number at the top whenever you need the current timestamp.
Common use cases
- Debug time fields in APIs or logs.
- Convert time ranges for database queries.
- Check schedules and token expiry times.
Check seconds versus milliseconds first
You pull a number like 1700000000 out of a database or a log and want to know what moment it actually represents — paste it in and get a readable date and time. The mistake that bites everyone is the unit, because seconds and milliseconds differ by a factor of 1000.
- 1700000000 is in seconds — roughly November 2023.
- 1700000000000 is in milliseconds; read it as seconds and you land tens of thousands of years in the future.
If the year looks absurd, you've almost certainly mixed up the two. Watch the time zone as well: the same timestamp shows a different clock time in UTC than in your local zone, which is easy to misread when you're ordering events or reconciling logs.
Can you see the 2038 boundary here?
You can, and it corrects a common misunderstanding. 2147483647 on this page is Local: 2038-01-19 11:14:07 UTC: 2038-01-19 03:14:07; add one second and 2147483648 gives Local: 2038-01-19 11:14:08 UTC: 2038-01-19 03:14:08 without complaint. The arithmetic is fine, because JavaScript holds the value as a double. The 2038 problem is not a rounding problem at all — it is a storage problem: a signed 32-bit integer has no room for that number, so anything reading the column as an int wraps negative and lands in 1901.