Timestamp Format Converter

Why convert timestamp formats?

The same instant can be written in many ways. APIs and JSON usually use ISO 8601 (2026-10-01T14:30:00Z), email headers and RSS feeds use RFC 2822 (Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:30:00 +0000), HTTP headers such as Last-Modified and Expires use the HTTP date format, databases and WordPress store YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss, and many systems simply store a Unix timestamp. Moving data between them is a constant source of subtle off-by-hours bugs.

This converter parses all of these, tells you exactly how it understood the input, and prints the result in every common format for any IANA time zone (such as America/New_York or Asia/Kolkata), with daylight saving time applied from your browser’s time zone database.

The biggest trap is a date without an offset. 2026-10-01 14:30:00 could be 14:30 in London, New York or Tokyo. JavaScript’s own Date.parse treats date-only ISO strings as UTC but date-time strings as local time — so this tool never guesses: you choose whether offset-less input means local time or UTC.

How to use the Timestamp Format Converter

1. Paste a date string or Unix timestamp into the input, or click one of the example formats.
2. Check the parse result under the input. If the string has no offset, choose whether it should be read as Local time or UTC.
3. Pick the time zone you want the results in — your local zone, UTC, or any IANA zone.
4. Copy the format you need from the table: ISO 8601, RFC 3339, RFC 2822, HTTP date, SQL, WordPress, Unix, ISO week and more.

Example

The input 2026-10-01T14:30:00Z shown in the Europe/Berlin time zone:

ISO 8601 (with offset):  2026-10-01T16:30:00.000+02:00
RFC 2822:                Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:30:00 +0200
HTTP date:               Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:30:00 GMT
SQL DATETIME:            2026-10-01 16:30:00
ISO week:                2026-W40-4

Which format should I use?

• APIs, JSON and logs: ISO 8601 / RFC 3339 in UTC with a Z suffix. It sorts correctly as text and is unambiguous.
• HTTP headers (Date, Last-Modified, Expires, cookies): the HTTP date format, which is always in GMT.
• Email and RSS (pubDate): RFC 2822 with a numeric offset.
• XML sitemaps (<lastmod>): the W3C Datetime profile of ISO 8601, such as 2026-10-01 or 2026-10-01T14:30:00+00:00 — see the Sitemap Generator.
• MySQL `DATETIME` and WordPress: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss. The value has no zone, so document whether it is UTC. WordPress stores both post_date (site time) and post_date_gmt (UTC).