Area Converter

Area Converter handles the units land and floor space are actually measured in, which spans three systems. Square metres and hectares for metric, square feet and acres for imperial, and the marla and kanal still used across South Asia.

Area factors are the square of the length factors, which is why they look unfamiliar. A foot is 0.3048 metres, so a square foot is 0.3048 squared, about 0.0929 square metres -- and a square metre is therefore about 10.76 square feet rather than 3.28. Doubling a room's dimensions quadruples its area, and the same relationship is why unit conversions feel wrong at first glance.

An acre is 4,046.86 square metres, which is 43,560 square feet, which is one chain by one furlong -- a reminder that it began as the area a team of oxen could plough in a day rather than as a round number. A hectare, by contrast, is exactly 10,000 square metres, and the two differ by a factor of about 2.47.

The page shows its working, not just its answer. Where there is a formula it is printed with your own numbers substituted in, so you can check the result rather than take it on trust -- which is the difference between a calculator you can use for something that matters and one you cannot.

Everything runs inside your browser. What you type is never uploaded, never logged and never stored, and the calculator keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded.

• Shows result, to twelve digits, conversion factor, the other way and in scientific notation together, so you are not running it twice
• A results table you can read across
• Updates as you type, with no button to press and no page reload
• Copy the result in one click
• Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser

The area converter is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Converting a floor area from square metres to square feet
• Comparing land in acres with land in hectares
• Converting marla or kanal into square feet
• Checking a plot size given in square yards