Area Converter
Square meters, square feet, acres and hectares.
1 m² in every unit
| Square centimeters | 10,000 cm² |
| Square meters | 1 m² |
| Hectares | 0.0001 ha |
| Square kilometers | 0.000001 km² |
| Square inches | 1,550 in² |
| Square feet | 10.7639 ft² |
| Square yards | 1.19599 yd² |
| Acres | 0.000247105 acre |
| Square miles | 3.8610e-7 mi² |
How this was worked outsquare meters → ft² 10.76391042
- 1 m² → square meters1
- square meters → ft²10.76391042
An acre is not a square of any round number: it is 4,840 square yards, which is a furlong by a chain.
Guide: An acre was a day of plowing2 min read
An acre was a day of plowing
It is the area one man with one ox could plow in a day: a furlong long by a chain wide, 4,047 square meters. Not a round number in any modern unit, because it was never derived from one.
A hectare, by contrast, is exactly 10,000 square meters — a square 100 m on a side — and is about two and a half acres. Most of the world measures land in hectares; the English-speaking world largely still does not.
Squaring a unit squares the conversion
This is where people go wrong. A meter is about 3.28 feet, so it is tempting to expect a square meter to be about 3.28 square feet. It is 10.76 — 3.28 squared.
The same trap applies in reverse and gets worse with bigger units: a square mile is not 1,609 square meters but about 2.6 million of them. If a figure looks implausibly small, this is almost always why.
Floor area is measured differently by different people
The arithmetic here is exact; what counts as the area rarely is. Estate agents, architects and tax authorities each measure a building to their own standard — some include internal walls, some the space taken by stairwells, some balconies at half value.
So two honest figures for the same flat can differ by ten per cent before any conversion happens. Convert the number you were given; do not assume it means the same thing as the one you are comparing it against.
Nothing is sent anywhere
Every conversion on this page is arithmetic done in your own browser. No request is made, nothing is stored between visits, and the page keeps working with the connection switched off — which is a reasonable way to check the claim.
Frequently asked questions
How many square feet is a square meter?
10.7639. Not 3.28 — that is the linear conversion, and area needs it squared. This single mistake is behind most wildly wrong property comparisons.
How big is an acre in a way I can picture?
A little smaller than an American football field including the end zones, or about 60 per cent of a football pitch. Roughly 4,047 square meters, or a square about 64 m on a side.
What is the difference between a hectare and an acre?
A hectare is 10,000 square meters and an acre is 4,047, so a hectare is just under two and a half acres. Hectares are metric and exact; acres are historical and are not.
Is anything sent anywhere?
No. It all happens in this tab, and the page works offline.