Area Converter

Convert between all common units of area: square meters, square feet, hectares, acres, square kilometers and more. Enter an area, pick the source and target unit, and get the exact result instantly. Below the converter you can read where the units come from, why an acre measures exactly 43,560 square feet, and how big familiar places are in all of these units.

Area conversion

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All units at a glance

Enter an area to see all conversions.

Typical areas compared

A feeling for size beats any formula. This table shows a few everyday and not so everyday areas in four common units, converted with the same exact factors the calculator above uses.

Example	m²	ft²	ac	ha
Car parking space	12.5	134.55	0.00309	0.00125
Tennis court (doubles)	260.87	2,808	0.06	0.03
Basketball court	420	4,520.84	0.1	0.04
American football field (incl. end zones)	5,351.22	57,600	1.32	0.54
Soccer pitch (105 × 68 m)	7,140	76,854.32	1.76	0.71
One hectare (100 × 100 m)	10,000	107,639.1	2.47	1
Central Park, New York	3,411,499.96	36,721,080	843	341.15
Lake Constance	536,000,000	5,769,455,983.36	132,448.48	53,600

Where the units come from

The metric area units are simply squares of the metric lengths: a square meter is the area of a square with sides of one meter, built on the meter that France introduced in the 1790s. The ladder has one trap. Because area grows with the square of length, each step up is a factor of 100, not 10: a square meter holds 10,000 square centimeters, and a square kilometer holds a full million square meters. Overlooking that is the most common mistake in area conversions.

For land, the metric system received its own unit right at the start. The French law of 18 Germinal, year III (7 April 1795) that created the metric system defined the are as a square of 10 by 10 meters. Today the are survives mostly through its big sibling, the hectare: 100 ares, or 10,000 square meters. The hectare is not an SI unit, but it is officially accepted for use with the SI and is the standard measure for farmland, forests and building land in most of the world.

The imperial units are squares as well: the square inch, square foot and square yard follow directly from the inch, foot and yard, which have been defined exactly in metric terms since the international agreement of 1959 (1 yard = 0.9144 m). That makes 1 ft² exactly 0.09290304 m². The two big land units, the acre and the square mile, are the odd ones out: an acre is not the square of anything, and its strange size of 43,560 square feet has a very practical medieval explanation.

By the way, the mile behind the square mile is the same statute mile that road speeds in mph are based on. You can explore it in our speed converter.

Why an acre measures 43,560 square feet

The acre began as a day's work, not as geometry. In medieval England it was the area a farmer with a team of oxen could plough in one day; the word comes from the Old English aecer, which simply meant field. Because a plough team was hard to turn, fields were worked in long, narrow strips: one furlong long (a 'furrow long' of 660 feet, the distance oxen could pull before resting) and one chain wide (66 feet).

Multiply the strip out and you get the odd number that still defines the unit: 660 times 66 feet is 43,560 square feet, or 4,840 square yards. English statutes turned the field practice into law; the statute of Edward I from 1305 fixed the rod at 16.5 feet and the acre at 4 roods of 40 square rods each, exactly the same area. Since the yard was tied to the meter in 1959, the acre has been exactly 4,046.8564224 square meters.

German-speaking countries had a direct counterpart, the Morgen: the area one man could plough in a morning. Its size varied by region, mostly between 2,000 and 5,000 square meters; the Prussian Morgen measured about 2,553 square meters. The metric hectare replaced the Morgen almost everywhere during the 19th and 20th centuries, while the acre is still in everyday use for land in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Why homes and land use different units

Real estate listings follow habit, not logic. Continental Europe measures homes in square meters, while the United States and the United Kingdom list them in square feet. The number in square feet is about 10.8 times larger, so a 100 m² apartment and a 1,076 ft² apartment are exactly the same size. Anyone browsing listings across borders converts constantly, which is exactly what this converter is for.

Land has its own scale. Farmland, forests and vineyards are measured in hectares across most of the world; the European Union runs its entire agricultural statistics and subsidy system on hectares, while the United States uses acres for the same purpose. Whole countries, lakes and cities are compared in square kilometers or square miles so the numbers stay readable: Lake Constance covers 536 km², which would be an unwieldy 536 million m².

A feeling for the steps helps: a hectare is a square of 100 by 100 meters, about 1.4 soccer pitches. An acre is roughly 40 percent of a hectare, a square of about 64 meters per side. In Switzerland, plots of land are also stated in ares, the 10 by 10 meter square that sits between the square meter and the hectare.

Quick rules of thumb

From square meters to square feet, multiply by just under 11 (the exact factor is 10.7639). A 100 m² apartment is 1,076 ft².
From square feet to square meters, divide by about 10.8, or take 9.3 percent of the number: 1,000 ft² is about 93 m².
Hectares to acres, multiply by about 2.47; acres to hectares, multiply by 0.4 (the exact factor is 0.40468564224).
Square kilometers to square miles, divide by 2.59 (the exact factor is 2.589988110336); back the other way, multiply by 2.59.

Frequently asked questions

How many square feet are in a square meter?

One square meter is about 10.764 square feet. The value is exact as a fraction, 1 divided by 0.09290304, because a foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters and a square foot is that length squared. For quick estimates, multiplying by 10.8 is close enough.

Why is 1 m² equal to 10,000 cm² and not 100?

Because area scales with the square of length. A square meter is 100 cm long on each side, so it contains 100 × 100 = 10,000 centimeter squares. The same rule applies to every step: 1 km² is 1,000 × 1,000, a full million m². Treating area prefixes like length prefixes is the most common conversion mistake.

How big is an acre really?

An acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 m², a square of about 63.6 meters per side. For a mental picture: it is a bit more than half a soccer pitch (57 percent), or about three quarters of an American football field including the end zones.

What is the difference between a hectare and an acre?

Both measure land, but they come from different systems. The hectare is metric: a 100 by 100 meter square, 10,000 m². The acre is the old English field unit of 43,560 square feet, about 4,047 m². One hectare therefore holds about 2.47 acres. The US and the UK quote land in acres, while nearly everyone else uses hectares.