Time/Numbers

Age Calculator

Exact age from a birth date — years/months/days, total time lived, and the next birthday.


                    

This tool calculates exact age from a birth date: full years, months, and days lived, the total number of days lived, and how much time is left until the next birthday.

How to use it

Common uses

Things to keep in mind

For people born on February 29, a "full year" in a non-leap year is conventionally counted as reached on March 1 — a rule that varies between jurisdictions.

The calculation accounts for timezone — an age "as of this second" can differ by a day depending on the chosen timezone if the birth moment is close to midnight.

Article about this tool: Age calculation: why it's not just subtracting years

Frequently asked questions

How is a February 29 birthday handled?

In non-leap years, that birthday is treated as March 1 for calculating the next birthday, while the exact age in years/months/days is computed from the actual calendar difference.

At what exact moment does age increase by a year?

Precisely on the calendar birthdate — up to and including that day the age is still the previous one, and from the next day it counts as new. This matches the everyday understanding of age.

What does the "Total lived" block show?

The same span of time expressed in complete weeks and days, plus the number of complete months — handy when you need a running total rather than a years/months/days breakdown.

Why does legal adulthood begin at midnight before the birthday in some jurisdictions?

Under the "no fractions of a day" legal principle used in some jurisdictions (including the UK), a birthday counts as a fully lived day, so a given age is deemed reached from the first moment of the day before the anniversary. This is a legal technicality that doesn't match everyday age counting.

Can I calculate age as of a future date rather than today?

Yes, the "Calculate age as of" field accepts any date, including a future one — handy for finding out how old someone will be on a specific upcoming event.

Articles: Time/Numbers

Unix time: why computers count time from 1970

Why January 1, 1970 became the reference point for time in most computer systems.

Cron expressions: how to decode a task schedule

How to decode an expression like */15 * * * * and know exactly when the job will run.

Number systems: why binary, octal, and hexadecimal exist

Why the color #FF5733 in CSS is written in hexadecimal digits instead of decimal.

Bitwise operations: how AND, OR, and XOR work at the bit level

How bitwise AND differs from logical AND, and why you'd operate on individual bits of a number at all.

Date difference: why counting days is trickier than it looks

Why naively subtracting dates can give the wrong result because of leap years.

Time zones: why UTC isn't the same thing as GMT

Why UTC never changes twice a year, while London time (GMT/BST) does.

Duration calculator: how to correctly add up hours, minutes, and seconds

Why adding minutes and seconds requires "carrying" the remainder to the next place, just like in decimal addition.

ISO 8601 duration: how to write a duration in a standard format

Why PT1H30M means "1 hour 30 minutes," not "1 minute 30 hours."

Week number: why different countries count weeks differently

Why January 1 sometimes falls into week 52 or 53 of the previous year under the ISO 8601 standard.

Roman numerals: how a system with no zero and no place value works

Why IV means 4, not 6, and how the subtraction rule works in Roman numerals.

IEEE 754: why 0.1 + 0.2 doesn't equal 0.3 in code

Why almost every programming language prints 0.1 + 0.2 as 0.30000000000000004.

Number to words: why turn digits into text

Why bank documents write an amount both in digits and in words at the same time.