Unix timestamp converter

How the conversion works

Timestamp to date takes epoch seconds (or milliseconds) and returns an ISO 8601 date in UTC. Date to timestamp runs the other way: paste a parseable date string and get back the whole number of seconds since the epoch. Both are one operation each, no server round trip, so you can drop a log timestamp in and read the moment it represents right away.

Example

To convert a date to a timestamp instead

The tool above is preloaded with timestamp to date. To go the other way, remove that step and click Date to timestamp in the Data list, then paste a date string as input. Everything runs the same way, locally in your browser tab.

Questions

What is a Unix timestamp?

It is the number of seconds (sometimes milliseconds) since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, also called the Unix epoch. Databases, logs, and APIs use it because a single number sorts and compares cleanly across time zones, unlike a formatted date string.

Seconds or milliseconds, how do I know which one I have?

A 10-digit number, roughly 1 to 2 billion right now, is almost always seconds. A 13-digit number is almost always milliseconds. This converter treats anything below one trillion as seconds and multiplies before converting, so either form pastes in correctly.

What time zone is the output in?

The converted date is shown in UTC (ISO 8601, ending in Z). A Unix timestamp itself has no time zone, it is a count of seconds; convert the UTC result to your local zone if you need it displayed that way.

Need more conversions in the same pass? The full Data Forge workbench chains timestamps with hashing, encoding, and more, or try the Base64 encoder/decoder and JWT decoder.