Performance Comparison of datetime, timestamp, and bigint for Storing Time in MySQL

When storing time values in a MySQL database, developers can choose between datetime , timestamp , or bigint . This article investigates which type provides the best performance for common operations such as range queries, grouping, and ordering.

Data Preparation

A table named users is created with three columns representing the same moment in different formats.

CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `time_date` datetime NOT NULL,
  `time_timestamp` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `time_long` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `time_long` (`time_long`),
  KEY `time_timestamp` (`time_timestamp`),
  KEY `time_date` (`time_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=500003 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1

The corresponding Java entity class uses Date , Timestamp , and long fields.

/**
 * @author hetiantian
 * @date 2018/10/21
 */
@Builder
@Data
public class Users {
    /** Auto‑increment unique id */
    private Long id;

    /** date type */
    private Date timeDate;

    /** timestamp type */
    private Timestamp timeTimestamp;

    /** long type */
    private long timeLong;
}

The MyBatis mapper inserts records into the table.

/**
 * @author hetiantian
 * @date 2018/10/21
 */
@Mapper
public interface UsersMapper {
    @Insert("insert into users(time_date, time_timestamp, time_long) value(#{timeDate}, #{timeTimestamp}, #{timeLong})")
    @Options(useGeneratedKeys = true, keyProperty = "id", keyColumn = "id")
    int saveUsers(Users users);
}

A test class inserts 500,000 rows, each with the current system time.

public class UsersMapperTest extends BaseTest {
    @Resource
    private UsersMapper usersMapper;

    @Test
    public void test() {
        for (int i = 0; i < 500000; i++) {
            long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
            usersMapper.saveUsers(Users.builder()
                .timeDate(new Date(time))
                .timeLong(time)
                .timeTimestamp(new Timestamp(time))
                .build());
        }
    }
}

SQL Query Speed Test

datetime range query: select count(*) from users where time_date >= "2018-10-21 23:32:44" and time_date <= "2018-10-21 23:41:22" – 0.171 s

timestamp range query: select count(*) from users where time_timestamp >= "2018-10-21 23:32:44" and time_timestamp <= "2018-10-21 23:41:22" – 0.351 s

bigint range query: select count(*) from users where time_long >= 1540135964091 and time_long <= 1540136482372 – 0.130 s

Conclusion: In InnoDB, range queries perform best with bigint , followed by datetime , then timestamp .

SQL Group By Speed Test

Group by datetime : 0.176 s

Group by timestamp : 0.173 s

Conclusion: Grouping by timestamp is slightly faster than datetime , but the difference is minimal.

SQL Order By Speed Test

Order by datetime : 1.038 s

Order by timestamp : 0.933 s

Order by bigint : 0.775 s

Conclusion: Ordering by bigint is the fastest, followed by timestamp , then datetime .

Summary

If you need to perform operations such as range queries or sorting on a time column, bigint is recommended. If the time field is only stored without further manipulation, timestamp saves space (4 bytes) but is limited to dates before 2038.