Convert any area unit in one place
Area measurements span a huge range, from a room in square feet to a country in square kilometres. Different fields and regions favour different units: builders use m² and ft², farmers and land registries use acres and hectares, and maps use km² and square miles. This reference converts between all of them from a single input.
Which units are used where
Understanding which system a figure comes from helps you ask the right conversion question:
| Context | Typical units |
|---|---|
| UK / European building plans | m² |
| US building plans, property listings | ft² (square feet) |
| UK and Irish agricultural land | acres |
| International agricultural and EU land records | hectares |
| Large-scale geography and maps | km², square miles |
| South Asian land records (India, Pakistan) | Marla, Kanal, Bigha (regional) |
The acre and the hectare are the two most confused units. They are both “agricultural” units, but they are not in a simple ratio: one hectare is exactly 10,000 m², while one acre is 4,046.856 m² — making a hectare about 2.471 acres.
How it works
Each unit has an exact factor to the SI base, the square metre. Your value is converted to square metres first, then out to each target unit:
1 ft² = 0.09290304 m² (0.3048 squared)
1 yd² = 0.83612736 m²
1 acre = 4046.8564 m²
1 hectare= 10000 m² (exact)
1 km² = 1000000 m²
1 mile² = 2589988.11 m²Routing through one base avoids the compounding error you get from multiplying a chain of unit-to-unit factors directly.
Worked examples
Property listing: A US home listed at 2,200 ft² converts to about 204 m² — useful when comparing against European listings which quote m².
Agricultural parcel: A 50-hectare farm is 50 × 10,000 = 500,000 m², which is about 123.6 acres (50 ÷ 0.4047). Enter 50 in the hectares field to see all equivalents at once.
Small room or flat: A 45 m² studio is approximately 484 ft². A quick rule of thumb: multiply m² by about 10.76 for an ft² estimate, or divide ft² by 10.76 for m².
Tips and notes
- A hectare is exactly 10,000 m² — a square 100 m on a side. Think of a city block.
- An acre is approximately the size of a standard Association Football pitch (105 × 68 m ≈ 7,140 m², so about 1.76 acres per pitch).
- For land deals, confirm whether “acre” means the international acre (used here) or a US survey acre, which is approximately 4,046.873 m² — a difference that matters for large parcels.
- A square kilometre equals exactly 100 hectares, making km²-to-hectare conversions a simple multiply or divide by 100.
- The square mile is still used in US land surveys; one square mile equals 640 acres or approximately 259 hectares.
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