Skip to content

Hectares to Acres

Convert hectares to acres. The hectare is exact, the acre is not, and the result is marked as rounded rather than presented as exact.

ac = ha × 10000 ÷ 4046.873

NIST SP 811 (2008), Appendix B.8 — acre (based on U.S. survey foot) to square meter (m2) = 4.046 873 E+03

The hectare is the unit European agriculture and land registries run on, and the acre is what a lot of the English-speaking world still quotes, so anyone comparing land across a border ends up doing this sum. Only one of the two is a definition: a hectare is exactly ten thousand square metres, a square a hundred metres on a side. The acre is a survey unit whose published value is rounded, so a conversion out of hectares into acres cannot be exact no matter how it is written.

How it is calculated

ac = ha × 10000 ÷ 4046.873

The acre goes to square metres first, then to hectares. The 4046.873 is the value for the acre based on the U.S. survey foot, and NIST prints it rounded — so the result is accurate to seven figures rather than exact, and the tool marks it that way.

Source: NIST SP 811 (2008), Appendix B.8 — acre (based on U.S. survey foot) to square meter (m2) = 4.046 873 E+03

Common values

hectaresacres
0.51.2355218
12.4710437
24.9420874
512.355218
1024.710437
2049.420874
50123.55218
100247.10437
200494.20874
5001,235.5218
1,0002,471.0437

Questions people ask

How many acres is a hectare?
About 2.471. A football pitch is close to three quarters of a hectare, which makes a hectare a little under one and a half pitches — a more useful picture than the number for most people.
Why is the answer marked as rounded?
Because the acre is. NIST publishes 4046.873 square metres for the survey acre, printed to seven figures rather than as an exact definition, so anything derived from it inherits that limit.
Which acre does this use?
The one based on the U.S. survey foot, which is what the published figure describes. The international acre differs by roughly four parts in a million, which matters only on very large holdings.
How big is a hectare in square feet?
A little over 107,639 square feet. If that number looks familiar it is because it is the square metre to square foot factor with four zeros after it.

Related tools

Found a problem, or want more?

A number that disagrees with its source is a defect, not a rounding preference.

What did you enter, what did the tool show, and what did you expect instead? If you have a source that disagrees with ours, a link to it is the most useful thing you can send.

Write to us

Opens your mail app with the page and tool already filled in.