Date to Unix Timestamp Converter
Convert a date/time into a Unix timestamp. Supports ISO 8601, RFC 2822, and browser datetime-local input. Returns seconds and milliseconds.
Date → Timestamp
About Date to Unix
This direction takes a date and returns the corresponding Unix timestamp — seconds and milliseconds simultaneously. The input is a browser datetime-local picker, so you can type or pick a date/time value and immediately see its epoch representation. The conversion uses JavaScript's Date constructor, which accepts ISO 8601 strings, RFC 2822 date strings, and a dozen other pragmatic formats. Use this direction when: you're hard-coding a timestamp into a test fixture and don't want to run code to get it; you're configuring a scheduled job in a system that accepts Unix times (cron wrappers, AWS EventBridge, Cloudflare Workers Cron); you're filling a database seed file with timestamp column values; you're debugging whether a date-shaped config is getting parsed correctly by calculating what Unix time it would represent. The datetime-local input is timezone-naive — it records the "wall clock" time in your local zone. The conversion to Unix timestamp interprets it in UTC by default. If you need to produce a timestamp for a specific other timezone ("what is 2026-06-01 09:00 Tokyo time?"), add the offset manually (Tokyo is UTC+9, subtract 9 hours) or use a dedicated timezone-aware tool.
Features
- Convert Unix timestamps to human-readable dates
- Convert dates to Unix timestamp format
- Support for multiple date formats and timezones
- View the current timestamp in real-time
How to Use
- Enter a Unix timestamp or select a date
- View the converted result in the other format
- Choose your preferred date format and timezone
- Copy the converted value to clipboard
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I enter a specific timezone?
The datetime-local input is timezone-naive and gets interpreted in your local browser zone. For an explicit timezone, paste an ISO 8601 string like "2026-04-23T10:00:00+09:00" into a full-ISO parser or manually add/subtract hours. There's no clean UI for specifying arbitrary zones here.
Why do I get different Unix timestamps for the same date in different browsers?
Browser timezone detection reads from the OS. If your OS is in different zones on different devices (a travel laptop vs home desktop), you'll get different Unix times for the same wall-clock time. Always use explicit UTC or offset for values that need to match across devices.
Should I output seconds or milliseconds?
Depends on the consumer. Unix CLI tools, cron, JWT, most database timestamp columns, and most Unix-era APIs use seconds. JavaScript's Date.now(), newer JSON APIs, and anything derived from JS use milliseconds. The tool shows both; copy the one your target expects.
Can I convert a date before 1970?
Yes — the result is a negative Unix timestamp. "1968-01-01" is around -63,158,400 seconds. JavaScript handles negatives natively; some databases (older MySQL TIMESTAMP) reject them. For historical dates, ISO 8601 strings are more portable than negative Unix times.
Other Timestamp Converter variants
Unix to Date
Convert a Unix timestamp to a human-readable date. Auto-detects seconds vs milliseconds, shows local, UTC, and ISO 8601 formats.
Millisecond Timestamp
Convert between Unix millisecond timestamps (13 digits) and human-readable dates. The default format for JavaScript Date.now() and modern JSON APIs.