How to use this area converter
- Type the area you know in the From box. The page opens with 1.
- Choose its unit in the From menu. The list runs from square millimeters to square miles and includes square feet, square yards, acres and hectares.
- Choose the unit you want in the To menu. The To box fills in as you type, and you can type in the To box instead to work backwards.
- Press Swap units to flip the two menus. The panel under the converter lists the same area in every other unit and gives the side of a square plot with that area.
How the conversion works
The tool turns your number into square meters and then into the unit you chose: value × (size of the From unit in m²) ÷ (size of the To unit in m²). Every size comes from an exact definition. The international foot is 0.3048 m, so one square foot is 0.3048 × 0.3048 = 0.09290304 m², and one square yard is 0.9144 × 0.9144 = 0.83612736 m². An acre is 43,560 square feet, which is 4,046.8564224 m². A hectare is 10,000 m² and a square mile is 640 acres, or 2,589,988.110336 m². These match the area factors in NIST Special Publication 811, Appendix B.8. Results use 8 significant digits, with whole numbers shown in full.
Worked example: 1 acre in square feet
With the default inputs the tool computes 1 × 4,046.8564224 ÷ 0.09290304 and shows 1 acre = 43,560 ft². The panel below it shows 4,046.8564 m² and 0.40468564 ha, and notes that a square plot of one acre is about 208.71 ft (63.615 m) on each side.
Common land and floor sizes
| Area | Square feet | Square meters | Acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 sq ft apartment | 500 | 46.452 | 0.011478 |
| 1,000 sq ft | 1,000 | 92.903 | 0.022957 |
| 2,000 sq ft house | 2,000 | 185.81 | 0.045914 |
| Quarter-acre lot | 10,890 | 1,011.7 | 0.25 |
| 1 acre | 43,560 | 4,046.9 | 1 |
| 1 hectare | 107,640 | 10,000 | 2.4711 |
Limits and edge cases
An area cannot be negative, so the tool asks for 0 or a positive number. You can type 1,250 with a thousands comma or 2,5 with a decimal comma, and a pasted 1.5e6 becomes plain digits. Values above 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 are refused. The tool uses the international foot and acre. Some US land records still use the US survey foot, which NIST and NOAA's National Geodetic Survey retired at the end of 2022. A survey acre is about 0.0004 percent larger, roughly 0.17 square feet on one acre, so use the legal description for boundary work. Conversions give flat, horizontal area and do not account for slope.
Need a length first? Use the length converter. To work out how much paint a wall needs, try the paint calculator, and for slabs and footings the concrete calculator. For cubic sizes use the volume converter.
Frequently asked questions
How many square feet are in an acre?
An acre is exactly 43,560 square feet, which is 4,046.8564 square meters. A quarter-acre lot is 10,890 square feet.
How do I convert square meters to square feet?
Multiply the square meters by 10.76391. For example, 100 m² × 10.76391 = 1,076.391 ft². To go the other way, multiply square feet by 0.09290304.
How many acres are in a hectare?
One hectare is 2.4710538 acres. As a rule of thumb, a hectare is about two and a half acres, and an acre is about 0.4 hectares.
Why is one square meter not 3.28 square feet?
Area grows with the square of length. One meter is 3.28084 feet, so one square meter is 3.28084 × 3.28084, which is about 10.76391 square feet.
How many acres are in a square mile?
A square mile is exactly 640 acres, or 258.99881 hectares.
Sources: NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 and Appendix B.9, conversion factors for area units.