What is a Unix timestamp?
A Unix timestamp (also called epoch time) is a way of representing a moment in time as a single integer: the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, known as the Unix epoch. It is timezone-independent, making it a reliable way to store and compare dates across systems. For example, the timestamp 1700000000 corresponds to November 14, 2023 at 22:13:20 UTC.
Why use epoch time?
Unix timestamps are the standard for storing dates in databases, log files, and APIs because they are compact (a single integer), sortable, timezone-neutral, and trivial to compare arithmetically. They are used in virtually every operating system, programming language, and backend service. When you need to calculate the difference between two moments in time, subtracting timestamps is far simpler than parsing date strings.
How to convert timestamps
To convert a Unix timestamp to a human-readable date, multiply by 1000 (to convert seconds to milliseconds) and pass the result to a Date constructor. This tool does that automatically and displays the date in UTC, local time, and ISO 8601 format. To go the other way, select a date using the date picker and click Convert — the tool returns both the seconds timestamp and the millisecond version.
Common use cases
Developers use timestamp converters when debugging log files that record events as epoch times, inspecting JWT expiry fields (exp and iat), working with API responses from platforms that return Unix timestamps, and verifying that scheduled jobs or cron tasks fired at the expected time.