PostgreSQL: How to Add Minutes to a Timestamp

Often in PostgreSQL you may want to add a specific number of minutes to a timestamp.

You can use the following basic syntax to do so:

SELECT *,
       ((start_time) + INTERVAL '10 MIN') AS ten_after
FROM emp;

This particular example adds 10 minutes to the timestamps in the start_time column of the table named emp and saves the results to a column named ten_after.

Note: To add a different number of minutes, simply change 10 MIN to a different number, e.g. 20 MIN.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: How to Add Minutes to Timestamp in PostgreSQL

Suppose that we create the following table named emp that contains information about when various employees at some company started working on a specific task:

-- create table named 'emp'
CREATE TABLE emp (
  empID INT  PRIMARY KEY,
  start_time TIMESTAMP
);

-- add rows to the table 
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0001, '2024-09-23 04:15:23');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0002, '2024-04-01 04:05:56');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0003, '2024-10-26 07:00:10');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0004, '2024-12-14 09:15:00');
INSERT INTO emp VALUES (0005, '2024-12-07 12:56:30');

-- view all rows in table
SELECT * FROM emp;

 empid |     start_time      
-------+---------------------
     1 | 2024-09-23 04:15:23
     2 | 2024-04-01 04:05:56
     3 | 2024-10-26 07:00:10
     4 | 2024-12-14 09:15:00
     5 | 2024-12-07 12:56:30

Suppose that we would like to create a new column that adds 10 minutes to each timestamp in the start_time column.

We can use the following syntax to do so:

SELECT *,
       ((start_time) + INTERVAL '10 MIN') AS ten_after
FROM emp;

 empid |     start_time      |      ten_after      
-------+---------------------+---------------------
     1 | 2024-09-23 04:15:23 | 2024-09-23 04:25:23
     2 | 2024-04-01 04:05:56 | 2024-04-01 04:15:56
     3 | 2024-10-26 07:00:10 | 2024-10-26 07:10:10
     4 | 2024-12-14 09:15:00 | 2024-12-14 09:25:00
     5 | 2024-12-07 12:56:30 | 2024-12-07 13:06:30

The resulting table contains a new column named ten_after that contains the timestamp from the start_time column with 10 minutes added to it.

You can use similar syntax to add a specific number of minutes to a timestamp column in your own table.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PostgreSQL:

PostgreSQL: Calculate Timestamp Difference in Hours
PostgreSQL: Calculate Timestamp Difference in Minutes
PostgreSQL: Calculate Difference Between Dates in Days