Get Current Time in Milliseconds in Go (UnixMilli and Alternatives)

The time package exposes wall-clock instants as time.Time. To get a Unix timestamp in seconds you use Unix(); for milliseconds since the epoch, use UnixMilli() (Go 1.17+). You can also derive milliseconds from UnixNano() or from a time.Duration via Milliseconds(). For arithmetic on Time values, see subtracting a duration from time and the zero value of time.Time.

Tested with Go 1.24 on Linux.

Use UnixMilli for epoch milliseconds

UnixMilli returns t as an int64 count of milliseconds since January 1, 1970 UTC. It does not depend on the location associated with t.

Run the program: you should see the current instant printed, a large millisecond epoch value, and 1672531200000 for 2023-01-01 UTC.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	now := time.Now()
	fmt.Println("time:", now)
	fmt.Println("Unix time in milliseconds:", now.UnixMilli())

	utc := time.Date(2023, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, time.UTC)
	fmt.Println(utc.UnixMilli())
}

Optional: Sub and Duration.Milliseconds

You can measure elapsed time from the Unix epoch as a duration, then read whole milliseconds:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	now := time.Now()
	d := now.Sub(time.Unix(0, 0))
	fmt.Println(d.Milliseconds())

	utc := time.Date(2023, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, time.UTC)
	fmt.Println(utc.Sub(time.Unix(0, 0)).Milliseconds())
}

For wall-clock epoch milliseconds, UnixMilli is usually clearer than Sub(time.Unix(0,0)).Milliseconds().

From UnixNano to milliseconds

Divide nanoseconds by 1e6, or by int64(time.Millisecond / time.Nanosecond):

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	ms := time.Now().UnixNano() / int64(time.Millisecond)
	fmt.Println(ms)

	utc := time.Date(2023, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, time.UTC)
	fmt.Println(utc.UnixNano() / 1e6)
}

Summary

Use time.Now().UnixMilli() for current time in milliseconds since the Unix epoch. UnixNano()/1e6 and duration-based Milliseconds() are alternatives when you already have nanoseconds or a Duration. Older material sometimes misspells UnixMilli as “UnixMulli”; the correct identifier is UnixMilli.

References

• Package time