Unix Timestamp to Date Converter — Free Online, Instant

Paste a Unix timestamp, get the human-readable date instantly. Shows UTC, your local time, and ISO 8601. Auto-detects whether your input is seconds (10 digits) or milliseconds (13 digits).

Convert a Timestamp Now

1. Open the Timestamp Converter
2. Paste your Unix timestamp
3. Read the date in UTC, local, and ISO 8601 format

How Unix Timestamps Work

A Unix timestamp is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC (the "epoch"). That is it. No timezones, no daylight saving, no formatting. Just a count of seconds.

• 0 = Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC
• 86400 = Jan 2, 1970 (86,400 seconds = 1 day)
• 1000000000 = Sep 9, 2001 01:46:40 UTC
• 1712345678 = Apr 5, 2024 18:14:38 UTC
• 2000000000 = May 18, 2033 03:33:20 UTC

Common Timestamps

Timestamp	Date (UTC)	Notes
0	Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00	The Unix epoch
946684800	Jan 1, 2000 00:00:00	Y2K
1000000000	Sep 9, 2001 01:46:40	The billennium
1609459200	Jan 1, 2021 00:00:00
1704067200	Jan 1, 2024 00:00:00
1735689600	Jan 1, 2025 00:00:00
2147483647	Jan 19, 2038 03:14:07	32-bit overflow (Y2038)

Seconds vs Milliseconds

Two common formats exist:

Format	Digits	Example	Used By
Seconds	10	1712345678	Unix/Linux, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go
Milliseconds	13	1712345678000	JavaScript, Java, Splunk, some APIs

Our tool auto-detects: 10 digits = seconds, 13 digits = milliseconds. No toggle needed.

Where You Encounter Timestamps

• API responses: Most REST APIs return timestamps in epoch format. Created_at, updated_at, expires_at fields are usually seconds or milliseconds since epoch.
• Database logs: PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB all store timestamps. Log analysis tools like Splunk and ELK show epoch times that need conversion.
• JWT tokens: The exp (expiration) and iat (issued at) claims in JWTs are Unix timestamps. Decode them to check if a token has expired. Our JWT Decoder shows these automatically.
• Cron jobs and scheduling: When debugging why a cron job ran at the wrong time, converting the log timestamps to human-readable dates pinpoints the issue.
• File systems: File creation and modification times are stored as timestamps. ls -l --time-style=+%s shows them in epoch format on Linux.

Quick Conversion in Code

• JavaScript: new Date(1712345678 * 1000).toISOString()
• Python: from datetime import datetime; datetime.utcfromtimestamp(1712345678)
• Linux: date -d @1712345678
• SQL: SELECT FROM_UNIXTIME(1712345678) (MySQL)

These work in code. For quick debugging, the browser tool is faster than writing a one-liner.

The Year 2038 Problem

32-bit systems store timestamps as a signed integer maxing at 2,147,483,647 (Jan 19, 2038 03:14:07 UTC). After that, the counter overflows to negative numbers, potentially causing date calculations to break. Most modern systems already use 64-bit timestamps. But embedded systems, IoT devices, and legacy software may still be affected.

Related: Base64 Encoder for decoding API payloads, JSON Formatter for parsing API responses.