Knots to Kilometers per Hour
Convert knots to kilometers per hour in your browser. A knot is one nautical mile an hour — exactly 1.852 km/h.
km/h = kn × 1.852
NIST SP 811 (2008), Appendix B.8 — knot (nautical mile per hour) to meter per second (m / s) = 5.144 444 E−01
Wind forecasts, sailing instruments and aviation all speak in knots, and everyone else has to translate. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, and a nautical mile is exactly 1852 metres — so the factor is exact and, unusually for an old unit, defined in metres from the start.
How it is calculated
km/h = kn × 1.852
The nautical mile was fixed at 1852 metres by international agreement, chosen to approximate one minute of latitude. That is why it converts to a round metric number while the statute mile does not.
Common values
| knots | kilometers per hour |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.852 |
| 5 | 9.26 |
| 10 | 18.52 |
| 15 | 27.78 |
| 20 | 37.04 |
| 25 | 46.3 |
| 30 | 55.56 |
| 40 | 74.08 |
| 50 | 92.6 |
| 60 | 111.12 |
| 100 | 185.2 |
Questions people ask
- Why do sailors and pilots use knots at all?
- Because a nautical mile is one minute of latitude, so a chart position and a speed share the same unit. Travelling one knot for one hour moves you one minute of latitude north — the arithmetic of navigation stays simple in a way it would not in kilometers.
- What wind speed is a gale?
- Force 8 on the Beaufort scale starts at 34 knots, which is 63 km/h. Small craft warnings usually go up well before that, around 22 knots or 41 km/h.
- Is a knot per hour a thing?
- No, and it is a common slip. A knot already contains "per hour" — it is a nautical mile an hour. Saying "knots per hour" describes acceleration, which is almost never what anyone means.
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