Convert m² to ha square metres ↔ hectares Free Online Secure
Type a value in square metres and read it in hectares at once. The factor is exact by definition, the arithmetic happens in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere.
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Common values — Convert m² to ha (square metres ↔ hectares)
| m² | ha |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0001 |
| 2 | 0.0002 |
| 3 | 0.0003 |
| 5 | 0.0005 |
| 10 | 0.001 |
| 20 | 0.002 |
| 50 | 0.005 |
| 100 | 0.01 |
Where these units come from
Square units need no definition of their own: a square metre is a metre by a metre, and everything follows from the length. The land measures are older and stranger. The acre began as the land a yoke of oxen could plough in a day, which is why it was long and thin rather than square — one chain by one furlong, 4840 square yards. The hectare and the are came out of the French Revolution, when land had to be measured in something decimal; neither belongs to the International System, but both were kept for land because a hectare is a comfortable size to picture and a square metre is not. Since the 1959 agreement on the yard, the acre is exactly 4046.8564224 square metres, so the conversions on this page are exact rather than approximate.
Where you meet them
Square metres price flats, size carpets and decide how much paint a wall needs; square feet do the same work in the United States and in much of the property market worldwide. Hectares belong to farmland, forests and planning permissions; acres to land deeds in the English-speaking world. Square kilometres and square miles are for countries, lakes and fires. Square centimetres and square millimetres live in workshops, on datasheets and anywhere a cross-section matters.
Questions people ask
How big is a square metre in practice?
A square one metre on each side. A standard interior door is about 1.8 square metres, a single bed about 2 and a small bathroom around 4. Floor space, paint coverage and property prices are usually quoted per square metre, so a rough feel for the size helps you judge whether a listed figure is generous or tight.
How big is a hectare, really?
A hectare is a square of 100 m by 100 m, which is 10,000 square metres or about 2.47 acres. A full-size football pitch, touchline to touchline, is roughly 0.7 of a hectare, so a hectare is a pitch and a half. The are, now rarely used on its own, is a hundredth of that: 100 square metres, a square ten metres on a side.
Is the answer exact?
Where both units are defined in terms of one another by whole numbers, yes — the page says so above the figure, and the only rounding is in how many digits are shown. Where the ratio has no finite decimal, the page shows twelve significant digits and says the relation is approximate rather than pretending otherwise.
Does anything I type leave my device?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded and there is no server to upload it to. Load the page once and it keeps working with the network switched off.
Famous squares, parks and cemeteries, in hectares
The places people remember best, Red Square, Tiananmen Square, a great cemetery, a royal garden, are usually described in square metres in guidebooks and in hectares in planning documents. To compare them you need a common unit, and the hectare is the natural choice. To convert m² to ha you divide by 10,000, which means moving the decimal point four places to the left. So 24,750 m² is 2.475 ha, and 440,000 m² is 44 ha. This page divides as you type, and the text below shows how well known places look when they are measured in hectares.
You will find the rule with worked examples, short profiles of both units, a comparison, a long tour of real situations and a list of the mistakes people make most often. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
How to convert m² to ha: divide by 10,000
The rule
One hectare equals exactly 10,000 square metres. To convert m² to ha, divide the square metres by 10,000, which means moving the decimal point four places to the left. So 5,000 m² is 0.5 ha, 30,000 m² is 3 ha, 125,000 m² is 12.5 ha and 1,000,000 m² is 100 ha. To go back, multiply hectares by 10,000.
Worked examples
Red Square in Moscow has 24,750 m², which is 2.475 ha. Tiananmen Square has 440,000 m², 44 ha. The Père Lachaise cemetery covers 439,000 m², 43.9 ha. Where the number has fewer than four digits, the result is a fraction: 800 m² is 0.08 ha and 45 m² is 0.0045 ha.
Why four places
A hectare is a square of 100 metres, and 100 times 100 is 10,000. The factor is the square of 100, not 100 itself. Dividing by 100 gives an answer a hundred times too big, a mistake people make when they work too quickly.
A quick check
The hectare is the large unit, so the number must shrink by four digits. If your “convert m² to ha” calculation produced a number only two digits shorter, you used the length factor.
The square metre
The base unit of the plot
The square metre is the area of a square one metre on a side. Guidebooks, cadastral extracts and building permits state sites in square metres. Once a number passes 10,000, it is customary to switch to hectares so that it stays short.
Where it appears
Building plans, land registers, planning applications, estate agents' details and encyclopaedia entries for squares and gardens.
The hectare
A square of one hectometre
The hectare is a square of 100 by 100 metres, 10,000 m², about two and a half acres. The name was coined in France in 1795, and the unit is accepted for use with the SI as the standard for land, parks and farms.
Where it appears
Parks, gardens, cemeteries, nature reserves, sports grounds, campuses and farms in almost every metric country.
Square metre and hectare compared
A hectare is ten thousand square metres. For a room or a plot, the square metre is natural; for a square, a garden or a campus, the hectare. The turning point comes around 5,000 to 10,000 m², when the number in square metres starts to have five digits.
The conversion is exact, so the only risk is the number of zeros. Dividing by 10,000 needs four zeros, not two. Always write the unit with the number, and the risk of confusion drops.
Where the conversion appears
Famous squares
Red Square has 24,750 m², 2.475 ha. Tiananmen Square has 440,000 m², 44 ha, making it one of the largest public squares in the world. Trafalgar Square has about 12,000 m², 1.2 ha. The Piazza San Marco in Venice has about 12,000 m², 1.2 ha. Guidebooks give the metric figure, but comparing them is easier in hectares, so a “convert m² to ha” calculation is the first step.
Cemeteries and memorials
Père Lachaise in Paris covers 43.9 ha, 439,000 m², with 70,000 tombs. Arlington National Cemetery covers 259 ha, 2,590,000 m². Highgate Cemetery in London has 17 ha, 170,000 m². Records of these sites give the area in the unit of the country.
Gardens and Olympic parks
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew cover 121 ha, 1,210,000 m². The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London covers 226 ha, 2,260,000 m². The Expo 2020 site in Dubai covers 438 ha, 4,380,000 m². These large figures are normally in hectares, and the underlying plans in square metres.
Palaces and royal grounds
The Palace of Versailles with its gardens covers 800 ha, 8,000,000 m². Buckingham Palace's gardens cover 16 ha, 160,000 m². The Imperial Palace in Tokyo covers 115 ha, 1,150,000 m². Official sites give the area in hectares or square kilometres, while the plans of single buildings use square metres.
Greenhouse complexes
A Dutch glasshouse company with 10 ha of glass has 100,000 m² of covering. The Netherlands has about 9,500 ha of glasshouses, 95 million m². Horticulture statistics give hectares, while individual growers talk about square metres of glass per crop.
Sports parks and golf
An 18 hole golf course on 60 ha covers 600,000 m². A sports park of 25 ha has 250,000 m² with a dozen pitches. Developers describe golf and sports parks in hectares, planners mark the pitches and clubhouse in square metres, and a “convert m² to ha” calculation connects the two.
Wetlands and bird reserves
A nature reserve of 200 ha is two million m². A small bird sanctuary of 12 ha is 120,000 m². Conservation agencies give hectares, and monitoring of nest sites or plots uses square metres. The conversion is routine in ecology.
Cities and districts
A city district of 500 ha is 5 km². A neighbourhood of 40 ha is 400,000 m². Planners prefer hectares for districts and square metres for plots. When a document lists plots of 500 m² in a district of 40 ha, the planner is comparing 0.05 ha to 40 ha, a ratio of 800.
Rounding
The conversion is exact. Give as many digits as the source: 24,750 m² is 2.475 ha. If the source says about 25,000 m², write about 2.5 ha. Never add digits that the measurement cannot support.
Spreadsheet use
Write square metres in column A and =A2/10000 in column B. For the reverse, use =B2*10000. Format with two decimals for large sites and four for small ones. A total at the bottom lets you check the sum of parcels against the whole site.
Teaching the idea
Mark a square of 10 by 10 metres on the ground and call it 100 m². Ask how many such squares fill a hectare. The answer, 100, shows that a hectare is 100 squares in a row of 100 by 100 metres. Then walk the hectare's edge: 400 metres, five minutes at a stroll.
A mental picture
A hectare is a bit more than a football pitch and a half. Ten hectares are fourteen pitches. A hundred hectares are a square kilometre. If the result of a “convert m² to ha” calculation does not match such a picture, repeat the calculation and count the zeros.
Anchors to memorise
1,000 m² is 0.1 ha, 5,000 m² is 0.5 ha, 10,000 m² is 1 ha, 50,000 m² is 5 ha, 100,000 m² is 10 ha. With these anchors you can judge any figure at a glance, and the converter above gives the exact value.
City squares as a measure of crowds
Crowd experts reckon about two people per square metre in a dense standing crowd. Red Square, 24,750 m², holds some 50,000 people. Tiananmen Square, 440,000 m², is said to be able to take a million. The numbers come from the area in square metres, while the square is described in hectares in the encyclopaedia, so a “convert m² to ha” calculation lets you check whether a crowd claim is plausible.
Universities and campuses
A campus of 40 ha has 400,000 m². Stanford's campus covers 3,310 ha, 33.1 million m². A typical European university site is 10 to 30 ha. Admissions pages give acres or hectares, and a “convert m² to ha” calculation helps when you compare a campus in one country with another.
Race tracks and motor sport circuits
A Formula One circuit typically occupies 60 to 100 ha, 600,000 to 1,000,000 m², including paddock and car parks. The Nürburgring complex covers about 150 ha. A kart track fits in 1 ha, 10,000 m². Circuit guides give hectares, while engineers describing run off areas or grandstands use square metres.
Palace gardens in comparison
The gardens of Schönbrunn in Vienna cover 160 ha, 1.6 million m², and Peterhof near Saint Petersburg about 100 ha, 1 million m². The Boboli Gardens in Florence cover 4.5 ha, 45,000 m². Garden history books list sizes in hectares, and a conversion helps to compare them with city parks.
Airports and airfields
A regional airport of 200 ha has 2 million m² of land. A large international hub of 1,500 ha has 15 million m². Terminal buildings of 50,000 m² thus take a small fraction of the land. Airport planners use both units, and a “convert m² to ha” calculation links the land bank to the buildings.
Hospital campuses
A large hospital campus of 20 ha has 200,000 m² of ground, of which buildings may occupy 60,000 m². A small hospital of 3 ha has 30,000 m². Planning guidance gives land per bed in square metres, for example 150 m² per bed, and the total in hectares for the site.
Stating a site in a press release
A press release about a new development might say "the 12 hectare site" and the planning application "119,800 m²". A careful journalist checks that 119,800 m² is 11.98 ha, about 12, and writes both. A reader who follows such stories can do the same with a “convert m² to ha” calculation, and avoid mistaking one figure for another.
How planners combine the two units
A typical planning statement lists the site in hectares, the building footprint in square metres and the floor area in square metres. A site of 3.2 ha, 32,000 m², with a footprint of 6,400 m² has a coverage of 20 per cent. If the floor area is 19,200 m² on three levels, the floor area ratio is 0.6. Both ratios are pure numbers, so the unit does not matter as long as the site and the building are expressed in the same one, which is why planners convert first and divide second.
Sources of confusion in reports
Three things commonly go wrong. First, a report mixes hectares in the text with square metres in the tables without saying so. Second, a thousands separator is read as a decimal point, so 1.200 m² becomes 1.2 m². Third, the exponent on the unit is dropped, and 12 ha becomes 12 m. A careful reader checks the unit on every figure and runs a quick convert m² to ha on one or two numbers to be sure that the document is consistent.
A last note on units
Write both figures when your audience is mixed.
Zoos and botanical gardens
The San Diego Zoo covers about 40 ha, 400,000 m². The Bronx Zoo is 107 ha, 1,070,000 m². The Berlin Zoo is 33 ha, 330,000 m². Zoos publish areas in the unit of their country, and a conversion lets you compare their sizes.
Stadium districts and fairgrounds
A stadium site with parking may cover 20 ha, 200,000 m². A fairground may cover 50 ha, 500,000 m². The Hannover fairground, one of the largest in the world, covers 100 ha, 1,000,000 m². Planning documents give hectares, event guides square metres of hall space, and the two are not the same.
Prisons and secure sites
A modern prison for 1,000 inmates may occupy 15 to 25 ha, 150,000 to 250,000 m², including buffer zones. Land requirements for public buildings are often given in hectares by planning authorities, while building plans give floor areas in square metres.
Industrial parks and enterprise zones
A business park of 60 ha has 600,000 m² of land. An enterprise zone of 300 ha has 3 million m². Government programmes list zones in hectares, and tenants think in square metres of floor, so the conversion appears in every brochure.
Marinas and harbours
A small marina of 5 ha, 50,000 m², can hold 200 boats. A large harbour of 50 ha, 500,000 m², can hold 2,000. Harbour authorities quote the water area in hectares and the pontoons and buildings in square metres, so a “convert m² to ha” calculation helps in analysing capacity.
Quarries and gravel pits
A gravel pit of 12 ha, 120,000 m², with an average depth of 8 metres holds nearly a million cubic metres of material. Permits state the area in hectares, extraction plans give square metres per phase, and restoration obligations often use hectares again.
Theme parks and attractions
A medium theme park covers 40 ha, 400,000 m². A large one 100 ha, 1,000,000 m². The rides and buildings take only 20 to 30 per cent, and the rest is paths, queues and gardens. Annual reports describe the site in hectares and the attractions in square metres.
More values for convert m² to ha
A longer list of conversions
If the value you need is not in the first list, these further conversions may be close enough to read off directly:
- 0.1 m² = 0.00001 ha
- 0.5 m² = 0.00005 ha
- 3 m² = 0.0003 ha
- 4 m² = 0.0004 ha
- 7 m² = 0.0007 ha
- 15 m² = 0.0015 ha
- 20 m² = 0.002 ha
- 75 m² = 0.0075 ha
- 200 m² = 0.02 ha
- 500 m² = 0.05 ha
- 2,000 m² = 0.2 ha
- 10,000 m² = 1 ha
Mistakes when you convert m² to ha
Dividing by 100
That is the length factor. For area, divide by 10,000.
Multiplying instead of dividing
The hectare is bigger, so the number shrinks. If 30,000 m² became 300,000,000, you multiplied.
Moving the point two places
Move it four. If you moved it two, the answer is a hundred times too big.
Quick answers
How many hectares in a square metre?
0.0001.
How do I convert m² to ha?
Divide by 10,000.
What is 25,000 m² in hectares?
2.5 ha.
How many square metres in a hectare?
10,000.
Does my number leave my device?
No. The calculation runs in your browser.
Related pages and a last word
If you work with land and area, these conversions are close at hand: Convert m² to km², Convert m² to mm², Convert acres to ha, Convert km² to ha, Convert ha to acres, Convert km to mi, Convert mi to km, Convert °C to °F, Convert °F to °C. The reverse of this page is Convert ha to m².
In short, to convert m² to ha divide by 10,000, remember that the factor is the square of 100, and keep the digits your source supports. Your number stays on your device: nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.