TIMESTAMP vs TIMESTAMPTZ

Question

Accepted Answer

TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE stores the literal date and time you give it, with no timezone context. If you store '2024-01-15 14:00:00', that's what you get back regardless of the session timezone. TIMESTAMPTZ (TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE) normalizes the value to UTC on storage and converts back to the session timezone on retrieval. For most applications that serve users across timezones, TIMESTAMPTZ is the right choice - it prevents the silent data corruption that comes from mixing timezone-unaware timestamps.