Length Converter

Convert between millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers, inches, feet, yards, miles, and more instantly.

Value
From
To
1 Meter = — Foot
Common Length Conversions
FromToMultiply by
MeterFoot3.28084
MeterInch39.3701
KilometerMile0.621371
MileKilometer1.60934
FootCentimeter30.48
InchCentimeter2.54
YardMeter0.9144
Nautical MileKilometer1.852

Frequently Asked Questions

One meter equals exactly 3.28084 feet (or 3 feet and 3.37 inches). The meter is the SI base unit of length. One foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters.
One mile equals 1.60934 kilometers. Conversely, one kilometer equals approximately 0.621371 miles. The mile is used primarily in the United States and United Kingdom for road distances.
A nautical mile is 1,852 meters (1.852 km). It is based on the circumference of the Earth and equals one minute of arc of latitude. It is used in aviation and maritime navigation worldwide.
There are exactly 12 inches in a foot. One inch equals 2.54 centimeters exactly (defined since 1959). One foot therefore equals 30.48 centimeters.
The most common conversions are miles to kilometers (1 mile = 1.60934 km), feet to meters (1 ft = 0.3048 m), and inches to centimeters (1 in = 2.54 cm). These come up constantly in travel, construction, and sports contexts where countries use different systems.
The metric system was developed in France in the 1790s and adopted internationally for its logical base-10 structure. The United States, Myanmar, and Liberia are the only countries that have not officially adopted the metric system as primary, largely due to the cost of conversion and entrenched cultural habits. The UK uses a mix of both.
Multiply the number of miles by 1.60934 to get kilometers. For a quick mental estimate, multiply by 1.6 (slightly under). For example, 5 miles × 1.6 = 8 km (exact: 8.047 km). To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 0.621 to get miles.
A nautical mile equals 1,852 meters (1.852 km), while a statute (land) mile is 1,609.34 meters. The nautical mile is based on Earth's geometry — one nautical mile corresponds to one minute of arc of latitude. It is the standard unit in aviation and maritime navigation worldwide.
One light-year is approximately 9.461 × 10¹² km (about 9.46 trillion kilometers). It is the distance light travels in one Julian year at 299,792,458 m/s. Light-years are used in astronomy to express stellar distances — the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.24 light-years away.
An angstrom (Å) is 10⁻¹⁰ meters (0.1 nanometers). It is used in physics and chemistry to describe atomic and molecular scales — for example, a hydrogen atom has a radius of about 0.53 Å, and visible light wavelengths range from about 3,800 to 7,000 Å.

About This Length Converter

This free length converter converts between metres, kilometres, centimetres, millimetres, miles, yards, feet, inches, nautical miles, and other length units. Enter a value and the result updates instantly.

When to use this converter

  • Converting distances for travel, maps, and navigation
  • Converting body measurements between metric and imperial
  • Translating engineering drawings between unit systems
  • Converting race distances (5K, 10K, marathon) between km and miles

Standards & References

Related Converters

Area Converter Speed Converter Weight Converter Temperature Converter

Related Articles

In-depth guides and technical articles.

View all →
The Metre Is Defined by Light — and the Inch by the Metre
Converters Sep 24, 2026
The Metre Is Defined by Light — and the Inch by the Metre
The metre is defined by the speed of light, and the inch is defined by the metre. Why conversions are exact, and why your calculator's fourteen digits are still wrong.
Why a Unit Conversion Error Destroyed a $327 Million Mars Mission — And Why the US Still Uses Imperial
Converters Jul 15, 2026
Why a Unit Conversion Error Destroyed a $327 Million Mars Mission — And Why the US Still Uses Imperial
The US still uses imperial because a voluntary metric conversion law in 1975 lacked enforcement and the Metric Board was abolished in 1982. Here's how the Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed by a metric-imperial unit confusion costing $327 million, why nautical miles are defined by Earth's geometry (1 arcminute of latitude), and why the modern definition of the metre via the speed of light is reproducible anywhere in the universe without a physical artefact.
Why Converting 10 Inches Gives 25.4 cm — Not 25.400000000000002 — and What Significant Figures Actually Mean
Converters Jun 20, 2026
Why Converting 10 Inches Gives 25.4 cm — Not 25.400000000000002 — and What Significant Figures Actually Mean
Converting 10 inches to centimetres gives 25.4 cm — not 25.400000000000002, which is a floating-point artifact, not additional precision. Significant figures represent the meaningful digits in a measurement, and conversion can't create precision that wasn't in the original. Here's what significant figures actually mean, why trailing zeros matter differently in different contexts, why scientific notation exists, and how many digits you should actually report at different precision levels.
Why Unit Conversions Produce Long Decimals, and How Many of Those Digits You Should Actually Keep
Converters Jun 18, 2026
Why Unit Conversions Produce Long Decimals, and How Many of Those Digits You Should Actually Keep
Converting 5 feet to cm gives a clean 152.4 — but converting 3.7 miles to km gives 5.9545728, a number with far more decimal places than "3.7" ever had. The conversion isn't adding error — it's revealing that the conversion factor itself has many digits, and reporting all of them implies a precision the original measurement never had. Here's the significant-figures principle for converted measurements, and why "round only the final result" matters for multi-step calculations.
Clothing Sizes Explained: UK vs US vs EU, Vanity Sizing, and Why You Should Measure Instead
Converters Jun 11, 2026
Clothing Sizes Explained: UK vs US vs EU, Vanity Sizing, and Why You Should Measure Instead
A UK size 12 is not the same as a US size 12, and both have changed over decades due to vanity sizing. Here's how clothing size systems compare internationally, the anthropometric data behind them, why brand-to-brand variation makes labels unreliable, and why measuring in centimetres is the only solution.