What is a Unix timestamp?
A plain-English explanation of epoch time, with a live clock showing the current Unix timestamp.
Unix time counts seconds elapsed since 1 January 1970 00:00:00 UTC (the epoch), ignoring leap seconds. Because it is a single monotonic number, every system agrees on it regardless of time zone — which is why logs, APIs and databases use it everywhere.
10 digits means seconds (e.g. 1760000000); 13 digits means milliseconds (e.g. 1760000000000). JavaScript dates internally use milliseconds, many APIs use seconds — mixing them up is one of the most common bugs in time handling.
Need conversions? Use our full Unix Timestamp Converter — it auto-detects units and shows local time, UTC and ISO 8601 together.
Frequently asked questions
Why do computers use Unix timestamps at all?
A single number counting seconds from one agreed moment is timezone-free, comparison-friendly and arithmetic-friendly: subtract two timestamps and the difference is elapsed seconds. Human calendars are terrible at all three.
Do leap seconds affect Unix time?
By definition Unix time ignores leap seconds — every day is exactly 86400 seconds. Real clocks (UTC) occasionally insert a leap second, which is why Unix time and UTC drift apart by a fraction of a second now and then.
How do I get the current Unix timestamp?
The live clock on this page always shows it. In code: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) in JavaScript, time.time() in Python, date +%s in shell.