Unix Timestamp Converter

Making sense of Unix timestamps

A Unix timestamp counts the time that has passed since the start of 1 January 1970 in UTC. Databases, logs, APIs and analytics tools use it because it is compact, easy to sort and independent of time zones. The downside is that numbers like 1767225600 mean nothing at a glance. This converter turns them into readable dates in Indian Standard Time, UTC and ISO 8601 format, and converts dates back into timestamps.

The most common confusion is between seconds and milliseconds. Many systems count seconds, giving a ten-digit number for current dates, while JavaScript and several APIs count milliseconds, giving thirteen digits. Mixing them up produces dates far in the future or back in 1970. The converter detects which one you have from its length, so you do not need to divide by a thousand yourself.

Time zones cause the second most common set of bugs. A timestamp is always in UTC, and the same moment appears as different local times around the world. India uses a single time zone, five and a half hours ahead of UTC, with no daylight saving, which makes conversions simpler than in many countries. When you store dates, keeping them as timestamps or ISO 8601 strings with the zone included avoids ambiguity. When you show dates to users, convert to their local time at the last step. Paste values straight from logs to investigate when an event happened, or generate a timestamp for testing. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere, so it is safe for production logs.