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Conversion Calculators

Units of length, weight, volume, temperature, speed and data.

42 calculators in this category.

A Guide to Conversion Calculators

Unit conversion is the one kind of calculation where the arithmetic is trivial and the mistakes are expensive. Multiply by the wrong factor, or by the right factor in the wrong direction, and the answer is confidently wrong with nothing on the page to suggest it.

The forty-two converters here are built to make the direction unmistakable. Each states the factor it used, so the result can be checked at a glance, and the dedicated one-way converters are labelled in the direction people actually search for rather than asking you to work out which way round a general tool is pointing.

Why there are two calculators for each pair

You will notice cm to inches and inches to cm as separate pages, and the same for several other pairs. That is deliberate, not duplication.

Someone converting a 32-inch waist to centimetres and someone converting a 170 cm height to feet are doing opposite jobs, and they want different things on the page: a different example, a different reference table, a different set of common values. A single page serving both has to be vaguer than either, and a general converter with a direction toggle adds a step before you get an answer. The factor is the same; the page is not.

Temperature

Celsius to Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit to Celsius are the two directions, and the general Temperature Converter adds Kelvin.

Temperature is the awkward case in unit conversion, because the scales have different zeros as well as different sizes of degree. That means a temperature cannot be converted by multiplying alone, and a temperature difference converts differently from a temperature. A rise of 10 degrees Celsius is a rise of 18 degrees Fahrenheit, not 50.

Length and distance

cm to inches and inches to cm for the small end, feet to meters and meters to feet in the middle, and km to miles and miles to km for distance. The general Length Converter handles anything else, including the units that come up rarely enough that nobody remembers the factor.

Weight and mass

kg to pounds and pounds to kg are the common pair, with grams to ounces and ounces to grams for smaller quantities and stone to pounds for the unit still used for body weight in Britain and Ireland. The general Weight Converter covers the rest.

One thing worth knowing: the ounce in this group is the ounce of weight. The fluid ounce is a volume and is not related to it by any fixed factor, because that depends on what the liquid is. Converting a recipe's fluid ounces as though they were weight is a common and unrecoverable error.

Volume and capacity

Gallons to liters and liters to gallons carry a trap: the US gallon and the imperial gallon are different sizes, by about twenty percent. These calculators ask which you mean rather than guessing from your location, and show both.

ml to oz handles the smaller end, and the general Volume Converter covers cubic measures as well as capacity.

Area

Acres to square feet, hectares to acres and square feet to square meters cover land and floor measurement, with the general Area Converter for the rest.

Area conversion is where people most often convert correctly and still get the wrong answer, because a linear factor has to be squared. Three feet make a metre to within a few percent, but nine square feet do not make a square metre: the factor is about 10.76.

Speed

mph to km/h for road speeds and knots to mph for marine and aviation use, with the general Speed Converter alongside. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, and the nautical mile is defined from the Earth's circumference rather than from the statute mile, which is why the factor looks arbitrary.

Energy, power and pressure

Joules to calories spans the physics and nutrition conventions, which differ by a factor of a thousand: the dietary Calorie is a kilocalorie. Watts to horsepower converts power, and psi to bar pressure.

The general Energy Converter, Power Converter and Pressure Converter cover wider ranges of units. Pressure needs care about whether a figure is absolute or gauge, since the difference is one atmosphere and both conventions are in everyday use.

Digital units

The Data Storage Converter and Data Transfer Rate Converter both handle the distinction that causes most confusion here. Storage is often quoted in powers of ten by manufacturers and powers of two by operating systems, which is why a 1 TB drive shows as about 931 GB. Transfer rates are quoted in bits per second while file sizes are in bytes, a factor of eight, so a 100 Mbps connection moves about 12.5 MB each second.

Fuel economy and time

The Fuel Economy Converter handles miles per gallon, kilometres per litre and litres per 100 km. The last of these is inverted relative to the others, so improving efficiency makes the number go down rather than up, and conversions between the two conventions are reciprocal rather than proportional. That also means the difference between 15 and 20 mpg is a much larger saving than the difference between 40 and 45 mpg, despite being the same five units.

The Time Converter covers seconds through years, and the general Unit Converter is the single page that handles every category if you would rather not pick one first.

Specialty converters

Two that do not fit a physical dimension. The Roman Numeral Converter works in both directions and enforces the subtractive rules, so it will tell you that IIII is not valid rather than accepting it. The Shoe Size Converter maps between UK, US and EU sizing, which is not a conversion in the mathematical sense at all: the systems are not linearly related and differ by manufacturer, so the result is the nearest standard size rather than an exact figure, and the page says so.

Tons and yards

Tons to yards and yards to tons convert between weight and volume, which is only possible if you know the density of the material. These calculators therefore ask what you are converting, because gravel, topsoil, sand and mulch all give different answers from the same volume. Any tool that offers a single tons-to-yards factor without asking is averaging over materials that differ by a factor of two.

When a conversion is not really a conversion

Three of the categories above look like unit conversion and are not, which is worth knowing before you trust a single factor.

Weight to volume needs a density, so it is a property of the material rather than of the units. Shoe and clothing sizes are conventions that were never defined against each other, so the mapping is approximate by nature. And currency, which this site deliberately does not convert, changes by the minute; a figure cached in a page would be wrong before you read it, so currency here is a display choice applied to your own figures rather than a conversion.

In each of those cases a tool that hands back a precise-looking number is overstating what it knows. The honest output is a range, a nearest standard value, or a request for the one piece of information that makes the conversion possible.

Checking a conversion

The quickest check on any conversion is a rough mental estimate first. A metre is a bit more than a yard, a kilogram is a bit more than two pounds, a litre is a bit more than a quart, and a kilometre is a bit more than half a mile. If the answer is not close to what the estimate suggests, the factor has probably been applied upside down, and that is the single most common conversion error there is.