Question 1

What is a Unix timestamp?

Accepted Answer

A Unix timestamp is an integer that represents the number of seconds (or milliseconds) that have elapsed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC — a reference point known as the Unix epoch. It is a timezone-independent way to represent a specific moment in time.

Question 2

How do I convert a Unix timestamp to a date?

Accepted Answer

Paste your Unix timestamp into the input field and the tool instantly converts it to UTC, your local time, ISO 8601, RFC 2822, and a relative description such as '3 years ago'. You can also enter a human-readable date to get the corresponding Unix timestamp.

Question 3

What is the Unix epoch?

Accepted Answer

The Unix epoch is the reference point for Unix time: midnight on January 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). All Unix timestamps are calculated as the number of seconds elapsed since that moment, making it a universal, timezone-agnostic way to record time.

Question 4

Why do developers use Unix timestamps?

Accepted Answer

Unix timestamps are simple integers, making them easy to store, compare, sort, and do arithmetic on. They are timezone-agnostic (always UTC-based), universally supported across programming languages and databases, and compact — a single number fully describes a moment in time.

Question 5

What happens to Unix timestamps in 2038?

Accepted Answer

The Year 2038 Problem (Y2K38) affects systems that store Unix timestamps as a signed 32-bit integer. On January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 UTC, this value overflows, potentially causing errors. Modern systems using 64-bit integers are unaffected, as 64-bit timestamps can represent dates hundreds of billions of years into the future.

Event	Unix (s)	Date (UTC)
Unix Epoch	0	Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Y2K	946,684,800	Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT
iPhone launch	1,178,150,400	Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Year 2030 starts	1,893,456,000	Tue, 01 Jan 2030 00:00:00 GMT
Year 2038 problem	2,147,483,647	Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT

Unix Timestamp Converter

1Timestamp → Date

2Date → Timestamp

Quick Reference

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