Date to Timestamp

A unix timestamp is the number of seconds between the Unix epoch — 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970 — and the instant you are describing. Converting a date to epoch time is that subtraction, which is why the answer is a plain integer with no timezone attached.

The timezone toggle matters before the conversion, not after. “2026-09-16 20:30” is an ambiguous wall-clock reading until you say which zone it was written in. Local reads it in your browser’s zone, daylight saving included; UTC reads it as UTC. Switch between the two and the resulting timestamp moves by your offset.

Seconds or milliseconds depends on what consumes the value, and both are given above. For the longer explanation and the FAQ, see the unix timestamp converter homepage.

1. Pick the date and time. Enter the date and time in the field above, or press Now to fill in the current moment. Seconds are part of the field, so you can be exact.
2. Choose the zone it was written in. Local reads the entered time in your browser's time zone, daylight saving included. UTC reads exactly the same digits as UTC. This choice changes the resulting timestamp.
3. Copy the timestamp. The Unix seconds value appears first, with milliseconds, UTC and ISO 8601 below it. Each has its own copy button.

The same conversion in the runtimes that usually need it. Each of these returns epoch seconds; multiply by 1000 for milliseconds.

JavaScript

Math.floor(Date.parse("2026-09-17T20:30:00Z") / 1000)Append Z to read the string as UTC rather than local time.

Python

int(datetime(2026, 9, 17, 20, 30, tzinfo=timezone.utc).timestamp())

PHP

strtotime('2026-09-17 20:30:00 UTC')

Go

time.Date(2026, 9, 17, 20, 30, 0, 0, time.UTC).Unix()

Java

Instant.parse("2026-09-17T20:30:00Z").getEpochSecond()

C#

new DateTimeOffset(dt, TimeSpan.Zero).ToUnixTimeSeconds()

Ruby

Time.utc(2026, 9, 17, 20, 30).to_i

Bash (GNU)

date -u -d "2026-09-17 20:30:00" +%s

PostgreSQL

SELECT EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM TIMESTAMPTZ '2026-09-17 20:30:00Z');

MySQL

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2026-09-17 20:30:00');

Excel / Sheets

=(A1-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400

The zone is the thing to get right in every one of them — the same wall-clock string produces a different timestamp depending on how it is read, which is the same choice the Local / UTC toggle above makes. Going the other way is on the timestamp to date converter.