The time.monotonic() function returns time stamps from a clock that cannot go backwards, as its name suggests.

In mathematics, monotonic, e.g. a monotonic function means a function whose output over increases (or decreaes).

This means that the result from the time.monotonic() function will never be before the result from a prior call.

Return the value (in fractional seconds) of a monotonic clock, i.e. a clock that cannot go backwards.

It is a high-resolution time stamp, although is not relative to epoch-like time.time(). Instead, like time.perf_counter() uses a separate timer separate from the system clock.

The time.monotonic() has a lower resolution than the time.perf_counter() function.

This means that values from the time.monotonic() function can be compared to each other, relatively, but not to the system clock.

Like the time.perf_counter() function, time.monotonic() function is “system-wide”, meaning that it is not affected by changes to the system clock, such as updates or clock adjustments due to time synchronization.

Like the time.perf_counter() function, the time.monotonic() function was introduced in Python version 3.3 with the intent of addressing the limitations of the time.time() function tied to the system clock, such as use in short-duration benchmarking.

Monotonic clock (cannot go backward), not affected by system clock updates.