What is a Unix timestamp?
A Unix timestamp (also called epoch time) is the number of seconds since 1 January 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. It is the same everywhere in the world, which is why servers, databases and APIs use it to store time.
Seconds or milliseconds?
Most backends and Unix tools use seconds (10 digits today). JavaScript's Date.now() and Java's System.currentTimeMillis() use milliseconds (13 digits). This converter detects which one you pasted automatically.
Get the current timestamp in code
- JavaScript:
Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) - Python:
int(time.time()) - Bash:
date +%s - SQL (Postgres):
extract(epoch from now())