What Is a Unix Timestamp?

A Unix timestamp (also called epoch time) is the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC (the "Unix epoch"). It's a standard way for computers to represent time as a single integer.

Current Unix timestamp: 1714521600
= April 1, 2024, 00:00:00 UTC

Why Is January 1, 1970 the Epoch?

When Unix was developed in the late 1960s, the developers chose January 1, 1970, as a convenient, recent reference point. It has no particular significance beyond being a clean starting point that predates Unix development but is recent enough to not cause overflow issues with 32-bit integers for decades.

Unix Time vs. Millisecond Timestamps

Different systems use different precision:

  • Seconds — Classic Unix timestamp (10 digits: e.g., 1714521600)
  • Milliseconds — JavaScript's Date.now() (13 digits: e.g., 1714521600000)
  • Microseconds — Python's time.time() returns float seconds
  • Nanoseconds — Go's time.Now().UnixNano()

How to Convert Unix Timestamp to Date Online

  1. Open FavorTool Timestamp Converter.
  2. Paste your Unix timestamp (seconds or milliseconds — auto-detected).
  3. See the human-readable date in UTC and your local timezone.
  4. Or enter a date/time to convert it to a Unix timestamp.

The Year 2038 Problem

32-bit signed integers can store a maximum value of 2,147,483,647, which corresponds to January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC. After this point, 32-bit Unix timestamps will overflow. Modern systems use 64-bit timestamps (which won't overflow for ~292 billion years), but embedded systems and legacy code may still be at risk.

Common Timestamp Operations in Code

// JavaScript: Current timestamp
Date.now()                          // milliseconds
Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000)       // seconds

// Convert timestamp to Date
new Date(1714521600 * 1000)         // from seconds
new Date(1714521600000)             // from milliseconds

// Python
import time
time.time()                         # float seconds
int(time.time())                    # integer seconds