Timestamp Converter
Convert Unix timestamps to dates and back, in UTC and local time. 100% free, no signup. Everything runs in your browser.
This free timestamp converter turns Unix time into a date a human can read, and turns a date back into a timestamp. Computers store time as the number of seconds since the first of January 1970, which is compact and unambiguous but completely unreadable at a glance. Every database, log file and API response you meet is full of numbers like 1750000000, and working out what moment that actually was is a daily task for anyone who debugs software. Paste a timestamp and you get UTC, your own local time, the ISO format and both seconds and milliseconds at once, plus a plain sentence telling you how long ago it was. The current timestamp ticks away at the top, ready to copy.
How to use
- Copy the live timestamp at the top whenever you need the current epoch time.
- To decode a value, paste it into the box on the Timestamp to date tab.
- If your number has thirteen digits rather than ten, tick Value is in milliseconds. That is the usual difference between a JavaScript timestamp and a database one.
- Read the results. UTC is what servers usually mean, and your local time is what you actually experienced.
- To go the other way, switch to Date to timestamp, pick a date and time, and read the seconds value.
- Press Copy result to take the converted value.
Why use our timestamp converter?
The seconds against milliseconds trap is the reason most timestamp confusion happens. A ten digit number is seconds, a thirteen digit number is milliseconds, and feeding one into a tool expecting the other lands you in 1970 or somewhere in the year 55000. A clear tick box and both values in the output removes that whole category of mistake.
Showing UTC and local time side by side is the other everyday saver. A server log is almost always UTC while your bug report is in local time, and the gap between them is exactly why an event looks like it happened at the wrong moment. Seeing both, plus a plain how long ago line, usually answers the question immediately. It works well beside the JSON formatter when a timestamp is buried in an API response, and the date difference calculator when you need the gap between two dates rather than a single moment.
Who is this tool for?
Developers meet epoch time constantly. Reading a created_at field from a database, checking when a JWT expires, working out why a cache entry went stale, or matching a log line to a user report. Being able to decode a number in two seconds instead of writing a throwaway script is the whole value.
QA engineers and support staff decode timestamps in bug reports and audit trails to build a timeline of what happened and in what order. DevOps engineers compare timestamps across servers when tracing a request through several systems. Anyone integrating a payment gateway or a third party API will meet epoch expiry times in the first hour, since almost every token carries one. Students learning programming use it to finally see what those long numbers mean and why 1970 keeps showing up.
Frequently asked questions
The number of seconds that have passed since midnight UTC on the first of January 1970, a moment known as the epoch. It is a single number with no time zone attached, which is why systems like it.
Those are milliseconds rather than seconds, which is what JavaScript produces by default. Divide by a thousand to get seconds, or just tick the milliseconds box here.
UTC is the global reference with no daylight saving. Your local time is UTC shifted by your zone's offset. The same timestamp is the same instant everywhere, it just gets displayed differently depending on where you are.
A standard text format like 2026-01-15T10:30:00.000Z. It is unambiguous, sorts correctly as plain text, and is what most modern APIs use instead of raw epoch numbers.
Systems that store timestamps in a signed 32 bit integer run out of room in January 2038 and wrap around to 1901. Modern systems use 64 bit values and are fine, but old software and embedded devices may not be.
Yes. Negative values are moments before 1970, so minus 86400 is the thirty first of December 1969. Some older systems reject them, which is worth knowing when you handle historical dates.
No. All conversion happens in your browser, so timestamps from private logs and internal systems never leave your machine.