7 Best JavaScript Timeago Plugins For Human-readable Datetime Format
This blog post covers 7 of the best open source jQuery plugins and JavaScript libraries for formatting date and time strings. These plugins (libraries) convert raw timestamps into auto-updating and human-readable format (e.g. "30 minutes ago", "3 days ago") to provide users with relatable context about when events occurred or content was published.
What Is Timeago?
Relative date and time strings, or "timeago" text, improves user experience by translating hardcoded dates and times into dynamic strings based on the current date. Rather than seeing "Posted on January 1, 2023," viewers see "Posted 6 months ago" — a format that is constantly self-updating and doesn't require mental math to determine when content was created.
7 Best Time Ago JavaScript Plugins
The options featured in this list represent some of the most popular, well-supported, and full-featured relative date/time JavaScript plugins available as open source. They are ranked based on their functionality, downloads/views, popularity, and, most importantly, their effectiveness in delivering accurate relative times. Let's get started.
Originally Published June 14 2023, updated Mar 28 2025
1. Convert Timestamp To User-friendly Format – relative-time.js
A lightweight (less than 1kb), standalone relative time JavaScript library that converts timestamps to human-readable time format such as “5 mins ago”, “in 7 days”, and so on.
2. Human-readable Relative Time Plugin For jQuery - Livetime
A minimalist jQuery data/time format plugin which turns ISO 8601 date strings into human-readable timestamps relative to your local time, such as "Just Now", "30 seconds ago", "5 minutes ago", "Yesterday", "Last month", "2 years ago", and so on.
3. Relative Timestamps Update jQuery Plugin - timeago
A smart and useful jQuery Plugin for updating fuzzy timestamps in your document automatically and intelligently. It supports almost all the major languages.
4. Lightweight Human Readable Date & Time Library – timeago.js
A lightweight and pure JavaScript version of the familiar jQuery timeago plugin that allows to parse and format dates & times using natural language like ‘5 minutes ago’.
5. Tiny Relative Time (Timeago) JavaScript Library – Lately.js
A super tiny (~ 1kb) and blazing fast timeago library that automatically shortens the Datetime (ISO 8601) into relative time (how long ago).
6. Dead Simple Time-ago Plugin For jQuery - Lately.js
An extremely lightweight (<1kb minified) jQuery plugin that automatically prints out the passed datetime in a more human readable format like '4 Months Ago', '2 Days Ago', and so on. Supports time time tag nd any other inline elements.
7. Minimal Time Ago Plugin For jQuery - time-ago.js
Yet another jQuery time-ago plugin for automatically creating timestamps with a nice readable format.
More Resources:
Looking for more jQuery plugins or JavaScript libraries to implement the timeago functionality on the web & mobile? See jQuery Timeago Plugin and JavaScript Timeago sections.
See Also:
- 10 Best Date And Timer Pickers In Vanilla JavaScript
- 10 Best Date And Time Picker JavaScript Plugins
