Unix Timestamp and Date

How it works

Put one value per line; the direction is worked out for you. A line made only of digits is treated as a timestamp and converted to a date, with twelve digits or more read as milliseconds and anything shorter as seconds. A line that looks like a date is converted the other way, and two written forms are accepted: 2026-08-01 15:40:00 and 01.08.2026 15:40. The dotted form is day first — 01.08.2026 means 1 August 2026, not 8 January — and results are printed in that same day.month.year order, so read them accordingly. Leave the time off and the start of the day (00:00:00) is assumed. The time zone applies in both directions: with Türkiye selected, dates are both read and written at UTC+3. Türkiye has used UTC+3 all year round since 2016 with no daylight saving, so no seasonal shift creeps into the result. Lines that cannot be read are marked in the output, which shows you exactly which one to correct.

This tool is also known as unix timestamp converter, epoch time converter, timestamp to date, date to timestamp, epoch to date, milliseconds to date, unix time converter.

What is Unix timestamp?

A Unix timestamp expresses a moment in time as a single whole number: midnight on 1 January 1970 UTC is treated as zero, and the value counts the seconds elapsed since. Because it carries no calendar, no month name, no time zone and no daylight-saving rule, comparing two moments, measuring the gap between them or sorting a set of records all reduce to plain arithmetic. That simplicity is why databases, server logs and APIs so often store time in this form and convert it to something readable only at the last moment.

What is UTC?

UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the shared reference against which every time zone in the world is defined. It has no daylight saving and never shifts through the year. A zone is described as an offset added to or subtracted from it: Türkiye is UTC+3, so when UTC reads 12:40 the clock in Istanbul reads 15:40. Servers normally keep their logs in UTC, because records produced by machines in different countries can only be merged sensibly if they all refer to one common clock.

What is the difference between a seconds and a milliseconds timestamp?

Both count from the same starting instant, 1 January 1970; only the unit differs. A seconds timestamp is ten digits long today, a milliseconds timestamp thirteen, and there is a factor of exactly one thousand between them. The distinction sounds trivial until it is missed, and then the result is not slightly wrong but nonsensical: treat a milliseconds value as seconds and the date jumps tens of thousands of years ahead, treat a seconds value as milliseconds and it falls back to the opening days of 1970. This tool tells the two apart by counting digits, so pasting the raw value is all that is asked of you.

Ten digits or thirteen?

A Unix timestamp counts the time elapsed since midnight on 1 January 1970. Server logs and most APIs count it in seconds, so today's values are ten digits long.

JavaScript, Java and most mobile libraries hold the same instant in milliseconds, which makes thirteen digits. The gap between them is a factor of a thousand: read a milliseconds value as seconds and the date lands tens of thousands of years in the future; read a seconds value as milliseconds and it lands in the first days of 1970. This tool decides by counting digits, so you can paste either kind without converting it first.

• 10 digits → seconds (Unix logs, PHP time(), database columns)
• 13 digits → milliseconds (Date.now(), Java, mobile SDKs)

Why you have to choose a time zone

A timestamp carries no time zone of its own. It marks an instant, not what a clock read in any particular country. The same value is 15:40 in Istanbul and 12:40 in London, and nothing in the number tells you which reading was meant.

So when you are matching a log entry to something that happened in the real world, you need to know which zone the log was kept in: servers usually write UTC, while screens shown to users display local time. Choose the wrong one here and every result is out by exactly three hours — enough to make an incident look like it happened before its own cause.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Unix timestamp?

It is the number of seconds elapsed since 1 January 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. Because it carries no time zone and no calendar detail, systems can store an instant as a single number and compare two instants by subtracting one from the other.

How do I convert a 13-digit number?

Paste it as it is. Values of twelve digits or more are read as milliseconds and divided by a thousand before the date is worked out, so there is nothing else for you to do.

Does Türkiye use daylight saving?

No. UTC+3 has applied all year round since 2016 and the clocks are no longer moved. That is why the Türkiye option carries no seasonal shift, unlike most European zones, where the same timestamp reads differently in summer and winter.

How do I get a timestamp from a date?

Write the date as 2026-08-01 15:40 or as 01.08.2026 15:40 — the dotted form is day first — and the matching timestamp in seconds appears on the same line.