Area converter
Convert square metres, square feet, acres and hectares. Exact factors, and the acre and hectare kept clearly apart.
Common area conversions
Every area unit
| Unit | Symbol | In square metres |
|---|---|---|
| Square millimetres | mm² | 0.000001 |
| Square centimetres | cm² | 0.0001 |
| Square metres | m² | 1 |
| Ares | a | 100 |
| Hectares | ha | 10,000 |
| Square kilometres | km² | 1,000,000 |
| Square inches | in² | 0.00064516 |
| Square feet | ft² | 0.09290304 |
| Square yards | yd² | 0.83612736 |
| Acres | ac | 4,046.86 |
| Square miles | mi² | 2,589,988.11 |
Questions
How big is an acre, really?
About 4,047 square metres, or roughly 70 by 58 metres if it were square — though it rarely is. The traditional definition was one chain by one furlong, the strip a team of oxen could plough in a day, which is why it is a long thin shape rather than a round number.
How many acres in a hectare?
A hectare is about 2.47 acres. The hectare is the tidier unit: it is exactly 10,000 square metres, or a square 100 metres on each side. Most of the world quotes land in hectares and only the English-speaking countries still lean on the acre.
Why isn't a square foot 12 square inches?
Because area scales with the square of length. A foot is 12 inches, so a square foot is 12 × 12 = 144 square inches. The same catch doubles again for volume, where a cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches.
What area is a football pitch?
There is no single answer, which is why it is a poor unit despite being a popular one. FIFA allows pitches between roughly 4,050 and 10,800 square metres, so "the size of a football pitch" can vary by a factor of more than two.