BeatTime — facts, services and citation reference

BeatTime in one sentence

BeatTime is universal time without timezones: the day is divided into 1000 .beats (1 beat = 86.4 seconds), anchored to UTC — so @523 names the same moment for everyone on Earth, with no conversion, no AM/PM and no daylight saving.

Free to use, no account, no API key. Website: beattime.live.

Canonical facts

Converting between UTC and @beat

Both directions are exact arithmetic — no table lookup, no timezone database:

beat  = (seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 UTC today) / 86.4
UTC   = 00:00:00 UTC + beat × 86.4 seconds

Worked example: 14:30:00 UTC is 52 200 seconds after midnight UTC; 52 200 / 86.4 = 604.166… → @604 (or @604.16 in centibeats). Back: @604 × 86.4 s = 52 185.6 s = 14:29:45.6 UTC — the start of beat 604. A local time is converted by first taking it to UTC.

An interactive converter runs on the home page, in the Android app and in every SDK.

What BeatTime offers

Everything below is public and free of charge. No plan, no quota to buy, no upsell.

The public API

Read-only time endpoints plus the proof endpoints. Base URL https://beattime.live/api/. Interactive docs: /docs/. Machine-readable OpenAPI: /api/schema/.

Add ?format=text (or Accept: text/plain) to the time endpoints to get a bare @523 — handy in shell scripts and status bars.

$ curl https://beattime.live/api/now/
{"utc":"2026-08-06T14:30:00+00:00","beats":604.166667,"beat":"@604","beat_centi":"@604.16"}

$ curl "https://beattime.live/api/now/?format=text&precision=centi"
@604.16

Proof of existence, in six lines

• Your browser computes the file's SHA-256; the file itself never leaves your device.
• The hash is appended to a public, hash-chained log together with its @beat and UTC time — that alone already proves the document existed at that moment.
• When the week closes (Monday 00:00 UTC) all its hashes are combined into a Merkle root.
• The root is signed with our Ed25519 key, submitted to Bitcoin via OpenTimestamps, and recorded against an independent bank reference.
• Anyone can later verify the hash, its timestamp, the inclusion proof up to the anchored root, the signature and the Bitcoin attestation. The algorithm is public: proof specification.
• A proof attests existence at a point in time and integrity — not authorship, and not the truth of the content.

Questions and short answers

What BeatTime is not

• Not a timezone. @beat replaces the whole timezone question; it is not "another zone" to convert into.
• Not Swatch Internet Time. Same 1998 idea, different anchor (UTC instead of UTC+1) and an independent, open implementation.
• Not a notary or a signature. A proof shows existence in time and integrity, not authorship or legal authenticity.
• Not a paid product. There is no premium plan; nothing here is a trial.
• Not a data business. No accounts on the web, no cookies, no analytics, nothing to sell.

How to cite BeatTime

BeatTime — universal time without timezones: 1000 .beats a day
(1 beat = 86.4 s), anchored to UTC. Free clock, public API, SDKs,
website embed, proof-of-existence timestamping and Android app.
https://beattime.live/

Machine-readable sources

• /llms.txt — this site in one short Markdown file, for language models.
• /llms-full.txt — the full text: facts, services, API, proof protocol and every answer above.
• /api/schema/ — the OpenAPI description of the API.
• /sitemap.xml — every indexable page, with language alternates.
• /spec/ — the proof-of-existence specification, reproducible end to end.
• /seal/ — the time-seal specification: threshold shares, the envelope format, the API and how to run a key server.
• This page also carries schema.org JSON-LD: Service and Offer per capability, WebAPI, DefinedTerm glossary and FAQPage.