Ten digits of seconds since 1970 — made human again.
Paste a Unix timestamp — seconds or milliseconds are detected automatically.
Pick a date and time (read in the zone chosen above) to get its epoch value.
The Unix clock, live — ticking once per second.
The epoch time converter translates between Unix timestamps — the single number computers use to store a moment — and human-readable dates, in both directions. It shows every timestamp in your local time and UTC, tells you how long ago (or ahead) it is, and auto-detects whether you pasted seconds or milliseconds. Like every Time Ledger tool, it runs entirely in your browser.
One counter, ticking since the start of 1970 UTC:
Timestamp = seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC 1784678400 → Jul 22, 2026
Bigger number, later moment — that's the whole format.
Two common units, told apart by size:
10 digits → seconds 13 digits → milliseconds ms = seconds × 1000
JavaScript uses milliseconds; Unix tools and most APIs use seconds. Detection is automatic.
The timestamp itself has no zone:
Same instant everywhere Display = instant + your zone
That's why you choose a US zone (or UTC) and results show that zone plus UTC — one moment, two labels.
Epoch time (also called Unix time or a Unix timestamp) is the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. It's how computers, databases, logs, and APIs store moments in time as a single number — 1784678400 instead of "July 22, 2026". Simple to store, sort, and subtract.
January 1, 1970 was chosen by the engineers building Unix in the early 1970s as a convenient, recent, round starting point for the counter. It has no astronomical or historical significance — it's simply the agreed zero, and it stuck as Unix spread everywhere.
Count the digits: current timestamps have 10 digits in seconds and 13 in milliseconds. JavaScript's Date.now() and Java give milliseconds; Unix tools, PHP, Python's time.time(), and most APIs use seconds. The converter above detects the unit from the number's size and labels which one it assumed.
No — a Unix timestamp identifies one instant, worldwide. 1784678400 is the same moment everywhere; only the human-readable display changes with the zone. Pick a US zone (Eastern through Hawaii) or UTC from the "shown in" menu and the result shows that zone alongside UTC. To convert a display time between cities, use the time zone converter.
Old systems that store epoch seconds in a signed 32-bit integer run out of room on January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC — the counter overflows and wraps negative, like a tiny Y2K. Modern 64-bit systems (including this converter, which uses JavaScript's 64-bit numbers) are safe for roughly 292 billion years.
Results are estimates for general guidance only and are not professional advice. Please double-check anything that affects pay, safety, or spending — see our full disclaimer.