Unix Timestamp Converter

What Is a Unix Timestamp?

A Unix timestamp — also called epoch time or POSIX time — is the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch: January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC. It is the most widely used system for representing a specific moment in time across programming languages, databases, and APIs.

Because it is just a single integer, Unix time is easy to store, compare, and transmit. Sorting records by timestamp is as simple as sorting numbers, and you never need to worry about timezones — the raw value is always in UTC.

Seconds vs Milliseconds — Which Do You Have?

The most common source of confusion is whether a timestamp is in seconds or milliseconds. Our converter detects this automatically:

• 10-digit number → seconds (e.g., 1700000000)
• 13-digit number → milliseconds (e.g., 1700000000000)
• 16-digit number → microseconds

JavaScript's Date.now() returns milliseconds. Python's time.time() and PHP's time() return seconds. MySQL UNIX_TIMESTAMP() returns seconds.

How to Get the Current Unix Timestamp

Here are quick one-liners for getting the current timestamp in common languages:

• JavaScript: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) (seconds)
• Python: import time; int(time.time())
• PHP: time()
• MySQL: SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP();
• Bash: date +%s
• Go: time.Now().Unix()

The Year 2038 Problem

32-bit systems store Unix timestamps as a signed 32-bit integer, which overflows on January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 UTC. Modern 64-bit systems are not affected and can represent dates far into the future. This is sometimes called the "Y2K38" problem.

See also: Unix Timestamps in JavaScript → Python DateTime Guide → SQL Timestamp Reference →