Acres to Hectares Converter

One hectare is 2.471 acres. One acre is 0.4047 hectares. Those two numbers cover most of what people need, and the converter below runs it either way for any figure.

The formulas

Hectares = acres x 0.404686

Acres = hectares x 2.471054

Both come from the same place. A hectare is exactly 10,000 square meters, and an acre is 4,046.8564224 square meters, so dividing one by the other gives 2.4710538 acres per hectare. Nothing is rounded at the source; the long decimals are just the two systems refusing to line up.

A rough mental version: hectares are about two and a half acres. For anything under a few hundred acres that gets you close enough to know whether a listing is worth reading.

What a hectare actually is

A hectare is a square 100 meters on each side. NIST describes it as a special name for 10,000 square meters, and it's the metric world's standard land unit, playing exactly the role the acre plays in the US.

1 hectare equals
Square meters	10,000 m2
Acres	2.471 acres
Square feet	107,639 sq ft
Square yards	11,960 sq yd
Square kilometers	0.01 km2

The word comes from "hect-" (a hundred) and "are", an older metric unit of 100 square meters. So a hectare is literally a hundred ares. You still see the are occasionally on older European land records.

The acre, by contrast, comes from farming rather than geometry: a strip one furlong long and one chain wide, which is how it ends up at the odd 43,560 square feet. Square feet to acres covers that side.

Acres to hectares table

Acres	Hectares
0.25 acres	0.101 ha
0.5 acres	0.202 ha
1 acre	0.405 ha
2 acres	0.809 ha
5 acres	2.023 ha
10 acres	4.047 ha
20 acres	8.094 ha
50 acres	20.234 ha
100 acres	40.469 ha
640 acres (1 square mile)	258.999 ha

Hectares to acres table

Hectares	Acres
0.1 ha	0.247 acres
0.25 ha	0.618 acres
0.5 ha	1.236 acres
1 ha	2.471 acres
2 ha	4.942 acres
5 ha	12.355 acres
10 ha	24.711 acres
20 ha	49.421 acres
50 ha	123.553 acres
100 ha	247.105 acres

Which unit does which country use

Acres are used for land in the United States and, informally, in the UK and Ireland. Almost everywhere else measures land in hectares, including Canada and Australia for official purposes.

The split matters most in agriculture and forestry, where international data is published in hectares as a matter of course. Global agricultural land figures from the FAO are reported in hectares, so any comparison between a US farm in acres and a national or global figure needs this conversion first.

Context	Usual unit
US residential lots	Square feet, then acres above about a quarter acre
US farms and ranches	Acres
UK and Irish land, informally	Acres
Most other countries	Hectares
International agriculture and forestry data	Hectares
Scientific and survey work	Square meters or hectares

Worked examples

A farm. A 250 acre farm is 250 x 0.404686 = 101.2 hectares.

A European listing. A rural property advertised at 3.5 hectares is 3.5 x 2.471054 = 8.65 acres.

A building lot. A half-acre lot is 0.202 hectares, or 2,023 square meters. In a country that quotes lots in square meters, that's how it would be listed rather than in hectares, since hectares are too coarse a unit for a single house plot.

A big number. A square mile is 640 acres, which is 259 hectares, or 2.59 square kilometers.

Hectares, square feet, and square meters

Going straight from hectares to imperial area units is occasionally useful, though it produces awkward figures:

1 hectare = 107,639 square feet
1 hectare = 11,960 square yards
1 hectare = 10,000 square meters
1 square foot = 0.0000092903 hectares

For anything below about an acre, square feet or square meters are the sensible units. The area converter handles every unit at once, and the square meters to square feet converter covers the metric floor-area side.

Common mistakes

Using 2.5 for precision work. The rule of thumb is fine for a mental check but drifts by more than 1 percent. Use 2.471.

Mixing up hectares and square kilometers. A square kilometer is 100 hectares. Getting those two confused is a factor of 100 error.

Treating an "are" as a hectare. An are is 100 square meters, a hundredth of a hectare. Rare, but it appears on old European deeds.

Converting acreage before checking what it includes. A listed land area may or may not include easements, roadway, or unusable slope. The conversion is exact; the underlying figure may not be.

Frequently asked questions

How many acres are in a hectare?

2.471 acres. One hectare is 10,000 square meters and one acre is 4,046.86 square meters, so a hectare is just under two and a half acres.

How many hectares are in an acre?

0.404686 hectares, so a little over four tenths. Ten acres is about 4 hectares.

What is a hectare?

A metric unit of area equal to 10,000 square meters, which is a square 100 meters on each side. It's the standard land measurement unit in most of the world, equivalent in role to the acre in the US.

How do I convert acres to hectares?

Multiply acres by 0.404686. A 250 acre farm is 101.2 hectares. To go back, multiply hectares by 2.471054.

How many square feet is a hectare?

107,639 square feet. That's the same as 10,000 square meters, or about 2.47 acres.

Is a hectare bigger than an acre?

Yes, roughly two and a half times bigger. If a property is listed in hectares, the number will look smaller than the same land expressed in acres.

What is the difference between a hectare and a square kilometer?

A square kilometer is 100 hectares, or about 247 acres. Hectares suit farms and estates; square kilometers suit regions and countries.

Which countries use hectares instead of acres?

Nearly all of them. The United States uses acres for land, and the UK and Ireland still use them informally, while the rest of the world, including Canada and Australia officially, uses hectares. International agricultural and forestry statistics are always in hectares.

Acres to Hectares Converter