From the [Quirks page](https://www.sqlite.org/quirks.html#no_separate_datetime_datatype) 3.2. No Separate DATETIME Datatype SQLite has no DATETIME datatype. Instead, dates and times can be stored in any of these ways: - As a TEXT string in the ISO-8601 format. Example: '2018-04-02 12:13:46'. - As an INTEGER number of seconds since 1970 (also known as "unix time"). - As a REAL value that is the fractional Julian day number. The built-in date and time functions of SQLite understand date/times in all of the formats above, and can freely change between them. Which format you use, is entirely up to your application. Also see [Date And Time Functions](https://www.sqlite.org/lang_datefunc.html)