Timestamp Tools
Convert Unix timestamps and ISO dates, build and check cron schedules, and plan meetings, calls and flights across time zones. Learn more
Cron Expression Builder
Pick when it runs, get the expression and its next five runs.
Cron Expression Parser
Plain-English explanation, field breakdown and next run times.
Cron Next-N-Runs Previewer
The next 10 to 50 run times, in local time or UTC.
Current Timestamp
The live time as Unix seconds, ms, ISO 8601 and more.
Duration Formatter
Seconds ↔ "2h 15m 30s", clock time and ISO durations.
Epoch Batch Converter
Convert a whole list of timestamps or dates at once.
Flight Arrival Time
Pick airports, get the local arrival time, summer time included.
Flight Arrival Time Calculator
Local arrival time from flight time and UTC offsets.
GPS Time / UTC Converter
GPS time, week number and the leap-second offset.
ISO 8601 Formatter
A date and time in every ISO 8601 form.
Meeting Time Across Timezones
One time for everyone, with working hours flagged.
Relative Time Formatter
"3 days ago" or "in 2 hours" from any date.
Timestamp Difference
Exact duration between two moments, with totals.
Timestamp Precision Converter
Seconds, ms, µs and ns, all at once and exact.
Timezone Converter
A date and time from any zone, across 14 others.
Unix Timestamp Converter
Unix time ↔ date, with seconds or ms detected.
World Clock
Your choice of cities, live, with day and night.
Timestamp, time zone and cron tools for developers and planners
Time is one of the most common sources of bugs, and these tools take the guesswork out of it. The Unix Timestamp Converter turns epoch time into a readable date and back, spotting automatically whether you've pasted seconds or milliseconds. Paste a whole column from a log file into the Epoch Batch Converter, line up seconds, milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds with the Precision Converter, or grab the live time in every format from Current Timestamp. The ISO 8601 Formatter writes any date in each ISO form, and the GPS Time Converter handles leap seconds and GPS week numbers.
Scheduling a job? The Cron Expression Builder creates the expression, the Cron Expression Parser explains one you've inherited in plain English, and the Next Runs Previewer lists exactly when it will fire, in your time or the server's UTC. All three point out mistakes, such as an hour of 24, instead of quietly getting them wrong. For durations, the Duration Formatter converts between seconds, "2h 15m" and ISO durations, the Timestamp Difference calculator measures the exact gap between two moments, and the Relative Time Formatter shows how "3 days ago" phrasing works.
Working across time zones is easier too. The Meeting Planner shows one meeting time for everyone and flags who'd be up in the middle of the night, the Timezone Converter shows a time across 14 major zones, and the World Clock keeps your chosen cities ticking on screen. Travelling? The Flight Arrival Time tool works out your local landing time from the airports, with summer time applied for your travel date.
Questions and answers
- Should I use the Cron Builder, the Cron Parser or the Next Runs Previewer?
- Use the Builder when you're writing a new schedule: fill in the five fields or pick a preset and copy the result. Use the Parser when you've found an expression in a crontab or config file and want to know what it does; it explains it in plain English and breaks it down field by field. Use the Previewer to check a schedule before deploying it, as it lists up to 50 upcoming runs in your local time or in UTC, which is what most servers use.
- How do I tell whether a timestamp is in seconds or milliseconds?
- Count the digits. For dates from 2001 to 2286, a timestamp in seconds has 10 digits (1700000000), milliseconds have 13, microseconds 16 and nanoseconds 19. JavaScript and Java use milliseconds, while Unix tools, PHP and Python's time.time() use seconds. The Unix Timestamp Converter and Epoch Batch Converter detect the unit from the length and tell you which they used, and the Precision Converter shows all four side by side.
- What's the difference between the Meeting Planner, the Timezone Converter and the World Clock?
- The World Clock shows what time it is now in the cities you choose, and remembers them. The Timezone Converter takes a date and time in one zone and shows it across a fixed set of 14 major zones, which is quick for a one-off check. The Meeting Planner is for arranging a call: you choose the people's locations, it shows each person's local time and labels it working hours, early, evening or night, and it can copy the times for an invite.
- Why do the two flight arrival tools give different answers?
- The Flight Arrival Time tool knows each listed airport's time zone and applies summer time for your travel date automatically, so it's the one to use for major airports. The Flight Arrival Time Calculator uses the UTC offsets you type in, which is handy for smaller airports but means you need the right offset for that date: London is UTC+0 in winter and UTC+1 in summer, for example. If they disagree, the offset typed into the calculator is usually the one to check.
- Why does a cron job run at a different time from the one I expected?
- There are three usual causes. Most servers run cron in UTC, so 0 9 * * * means 10am in the UK during British Summer Time. If both the day-of-month and day-of-week fields are set, cron runs when either matches, so 0 0 1 * 1 runs on the 1st and on every Monday. And jobs scheduled between 1am and 2am may be skipped or run twice when the clocks change. The Next Runs Previewer shows the real run times so you can spot all three.