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Unix Timestamp Converter (Epoch Time Converter)
Paste a Unix timestamp from a log file or an API to see the date and time it stands for. It shows both UTC and your own time zone. It works the other way too, turning a date into epoch time. For instance, 1767225600 is midnight UTC on January 1, 2026. Both 10-digit seconds and 13-digit milliseconds are recognized.
A timestamp gives you the ISO date, the UTC time and your local time. A date and time gives you Unix seconds and milliseconds. Anything of 1 trillion or more is read as milliseconds.
Quick answer: A Unix timestamp counts the seconds since midnight UTC on January 1, 1970, the moment called the Unix epoch. To read one as a date, add that many seconds to the epoch. Divide by 1,000 first if it is in milliseconds. That is how 1767225600 lands on 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
What is Unix time (epoch time)?
Unix time, also called epoch time or POSIX time, is a running count of seconds. It started at 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970. Servers, databases and APIs store dates this way because one plain number is easy to sort and compare. It means the same instant everywhere. Leap seconds are left out, so every day counts as exactly 86,400 seconds.
Timestamp 0 is the epoch itself. A number like 1758499200 is read as seconds, while 1758499200000, three digits longer, is the same moment in milliseconds.
Worked example: converting a Unix timestamp to a date
Suppose an error log shows the timestamp 1767225600. Ten digits and below a trillion means the value is in seconds, not milliseconds.
A day holds 86,400 seconds, and 1,767,225,600 divides by that exactly 20,454 times. Counting 20,454 days on from January 1, 1970 lands on January 1, 2026, with nothing left over. So the moment is midnight UTC.
Someone reading the same log in New York would see 7:00 PM on December 31, 2025. Eastern time is five hours behind UTC in winter. The instant is identical; only the clock on the wall differs.
Result: 1767225600 is 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z, a Thursday at midnight UTC.
Unix timestamps for notable dates
| Date and time (UTC) | Unix seconds | Unix milliseconds |
|---|---|---|
| 1970-01-01 00:00:00 (epoch) | 0 | 0 |
| 2001-09-09 01:46:40 | 1,000,000,000 | 1,000,000,000,000 |
| 2020-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,577,836,800 | 1,577,836,800,000 |
| 2021-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,609,459,200 | 1,609,459,200,000 |
| 2022-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,640,995,200 | 1,640,995,200,000 |
| 2023-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,672,531,200 | 1,672,531,200,000 |
| 2024-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,704,067,200 | 1,704,067,200,000 |
| 2025-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,735,689,600 | 1,735,689,600,000 |
| 2026-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,767,225,600 | 1,767,225,600,000 |
| 2027-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,798,761,600 | 1,798,761,600,000 |
| 2028-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,830,297,600 | 1,830,297,600,000 |
| 2029-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,861,920,000 | 1,861,920,000,000 |
| 2030-01-01 00:00:00 | 1,893,456,000 | 1,893,456,000,000 |
| 2033-05-18 03:33:20 | 2,000,000,000 | 2,000,000,000,000 |
| 2038-01-19 03:14:07 (32-bit limit) | 2,147,483,647 | 2,147,483,647,000 |
Remove the commas before pasting a value into the converter.
Unix timestamp to date in Excel or Google Sheets
Spreadsheets count days from their own start date. So a timestamp has to be divided by the seconds in a day and shifted to 1970. Format the result cell as a date and time.
| What you want | Formula (timestamp or date in A2) |
|---|---|
| Seconds to a UTC date | =A2/86400+DATE(1970,1,1) |
| Milliseconds to a UTC date | =A2/86400000+DATE(1970,1,1) |
| UTC date to a Unix timestamp | =(A2-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400 |
| Seconds to US Eastern standard time | =A2/86400+DATE(1970,1,1)-5/24 |
Getting the current Unix time in code
Every major language can read the clock as epoch time. Watch the units, because some return milliseconds.
| Language or tool | Code | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) | seconds |
| JavaScript | Date.now() | milliseconds |
| Python | int(time.time()) | seconds |
| PHP | time() | seconds |
| MySQL | UNIX_TIMESTAMP() | seconds |
| PostgreSQL | EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM now()) | seconds |
| Linux or macOS shell | date +%s | seconds |
Mistakes that give the wrong date
Mixing up seconds and milliseconds is the big one. JavaScript's Date.now() hands back 13 digits, while date +%s gives 10. Reading the longer number as seconds throws the date tens of thousands of years into the future.
A timestamp also has no time zone of its own. It is always counted from UTC, and only the way it is displayed changes. That is why two colleagues in different cities see different clock times for the same number.
Going the other way needs care. "2026-01-01 00:00" in Tokyo and the same text in London are nine hours apart. So tick "Treat date/time as UTC" only when the time you typed really is UTC.
The year 2038 problem
Older systems kept Unix time in a signed 32-bit integer, which tops out at 2,147,483,647. That value is 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038. One second later the number wraps to a negative value that reads as December 13, 1901. Modern systems use 64-bit time and are not affected, but embedded devices and old databases can still be.
Unix and epoch time questions
Most of these come from developers reading logs or people decoding a date in a spreadsheet export.
How do I convert a Unix timestamp to a date?
Paste it into the converter above and it shows the ISO date, the UTC time and your local time. By hand, divide by 86,400 to get days since January 1, 1970. The remainder is the time of day in seconds.
Is my timestamp in seconds or milliseconds?
Count the digits. A present-day timestamp in seconds has 10, and one in milliseconds has 13. So 1767225600000 is the same New Year's moment as 1767225600 written in milliseconds.
What is the Unix epoch?
It is the starting point, 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, January 1, 1970. Timestamp 0 is that instant, and a negative number such as −86400 is a day earlier, December 31, 1969.
What is the current epoch time?
The live counter at the top of this page shows it in seconds and milliseconds and ticks up once a second. In October 2026 the seconds value is a little above 1.79 billion.
Does Unix time change with time zones?
No. The number is the same everywhere at a given instant, and only its local display changes. A timestamp of midnight UTC reads as 7:00 PM the previous evening in New York in winter.
Does Unix time count leap seconds?
It does not. POSIX treats every day as exactly 86,400 seconds, so subtracting two timestamps skips the 27 leap seconds added since 1972. Astronomers care about that gap, but almost nobody else notices it.
How do I convert a date to a Unix timestamp?
Count the seconds from January 1, 1970 UTC to the moment you want. Midnight UTC on January 1, 2026 is 20,454 days after the epoch, and 20,454 × 86,400 gives 1767225600.
Sources
- The Open Group Base Specifications (POSIX), section 4.19: Seconds Since the Epoch — the definition of Unix time, the 1970 UTC epoch and 86,400-second days
Cite this page
APA: ClockTotals. (2026, October 16). Unix Timestamp Converter (Epoch Time Converter). https://clocktotals.com/unix-timestamp-converter/
MLA: “Unix Timestamp Converter (Epoch Time Converter).” ClockTotals, 16 Oct. 2026, clocktotals.com/unix-timestamp-converter/.
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