Unix Epoch Timestamp Converter
Translate Unix epoch integer timestamps into local dates, UTC date strings, and ISO 8601 formatting, or calculate time values from calendar parts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Unix Epoch Time?
Unix time (also known as Epoch time or POSIX time) is a system for describing points in time, defined as the total number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix Epoch: Thursday, January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), minus leap seconds. Because it is simple to store as a single integer, it is standard in databases, log streams, and file metadata.
Seconds vs. Milliseconds
Different programming ecosystems represent time values in different decimal bases:
- Unix Seconds (10 digits): The standard output of Unix shell commands (e.g.
date +%s) and backend databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL. - JavaScript Milliseconds (13 digits): Used by Javascript engines (e.g.
Date.now()) and Java APIs. Milliseconds offer sub-second resolution for network tracing and debugging.
The Year 2038 Problem (Y2K38)
Many legacy database columns and systems store Unix time as a 32-bit signed integer. The maximum integer value represented in a signed 32-bit block is 2,147,483,647. On January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC, the timestamp counter will overflow and wrap around as a negative integer, resetting clocks back to 1901. Modern platforms resolve this problem by transitioning timestamp variables to 64-bit integer values, pushing the overflow limit out by billions of years.