Seconds Since 1970 — Free Live Counter

As of 2024, there are approximately 1.7 trillion seconds since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC (the Unix epoch). The exact number increases by 1 every second. You can calculate it in JavaScript with Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000), in Python with int(time.time()), or in Bash with date +%s.

Unix time starts on January 1, 1970 because that date was chosen by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie while developing Unix on a PDP-7 at Bell Labs. The exact date was convenient and recent enough that 32-bit integers could represent timestamps for several decades into the future without overflow.

The current Unix timestamp is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. You can check it on this page — the counter updates every second. In JavaScript: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000). In Python: int(time.time()). In Bash: date +%s.

Unix time reached 2 billion seconds (2,000,000,000) on May 18, 2033. The more critical milestone is 2,147,483,647 — the maximum value of a signed 32-bit integer — which will be reached on January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC. This is known as the Year 2038 Problem.

For 32-bit signed integers, the maximum Unix timestamp is 2,147,483,647, corresponding to January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC. After this point, 32-bit systems will overflow. Modern 64-bit systems can represent timestamps up to approximately 292 billion years in the future.