Use this calculator to easily calculate the hour difference between any given two times within a day, accurate to the minute. It will also show you the result in minutes, if an hour calculation is not convenient for you. If you wonder how many hours you spend on certain activities (e.g. How many hours am I working?), this is the hours calculator for you.
Quick navigation:
- How to calculate hours between times?
- Hours to decimal hours conversion
- Working hours with lunch break excluded
- How many hours in a year?
- How many hours in a month?
- How many hours in a week?
How to calculate hours between times?
This simple online tool makes it easy to calculate the difference in hours and minutes between two given times. To calculate the hours and minutes contained in a time period you need to know its beginning and end. The hours calculator will use the time format depending on your browser locale settings, e.g. US, UK.
After you enter the beginning and the end of the time period you are interested in, you simply click the "Calculate difference" button. Below you will get the difference in both full hours and in minutes. If the first hour you enter is later in the day than the second hour you enter, the time difference is calculated as if the first hour is for today and the second is tomorrow. For example, entering a start time of 6PM and end time of 8AM in the calculator, it will calculate the difference in hours, minutes, and seconds from 6PM today to 8AM tomorrow (14 hours).
This calculator for the number of hours between two times could be used to find out for how long you have worked in order to fill in timesheets. For example, how many hours are there between 9 and 5:30 pm (or 9:00 and 17:30)? You simply need to enter the two times in any order and click on "Calculate". The result will be 8 hours 30 minutes (8:30 hours or 8.5 hours in decimal) or 510 minutes. There are 8 full hours between these times. It also supports the subtraction of lunch breaks and other types of pauses from the total hours in between. For more on that see lunch breaks.
Hours to decimal hours conversion
This tool automatically displays decimal hours between times, but if you need to convert digital hours and minutes (hh:ss) into decimal hours, the math is simple: divide the number of minutes by 60 to get the decimal part, then append it to the number of hours. For example, 8:15 is 8.25 in decimal hours since there are eight full hours and 15 minutes divided by 60 equals 0.25. You can also try our digital time converter.
How many hours?
Many people working a job with regular hours want to find out the duration of their work day. If you're also wondering "how many hours am I working?" and you are on a 9AM to 5PM job, then the question is how many hours is 9 to 5. The answer is exactly eight hours.
If you leave your kids early at school and pick them up in the afternoon, you might wonder how much time they spend in school each day. If you leave them at 7AM and pick them up at 3PM then the question is how many hours is 7AM to 3PM and the answer is eight hours (15-7 = 8).
Here are some more examples of calculating how many hours are between two specified points in time. You can use our hours calculator above to compute the time between any two times specified by hours and minutes.
| Start Time - End Time | Time Between |
|---|---|
| 9AM to 5PM | 8:00 |
| 7AM to 5PM | 10:00 |
| 8AM to 4PM | 8:00 |
| 8AM to 8PM | 12:00 |
| 8AM to 6PM | 10:00 |
| 9AM to 5:30PM | 8:30 |
| 7:30AM to 4:30PM | 9:00 |
Working hours with lunch break excluded
If you are using our calculator to understand how many hours you are working, then you need to use the functionality which allows the subtraction of a lunch break or other types of shift breaks to get just the number of working hours. For example, a 7:30 to 4:30 work day with a 30 minute lunch break means an 8.5 hour work day (9 hours in between, minus 30 minutes or 0.5 hours equals 8.5). If you are working shifts your break may not be a lunch break, and you may also have multiple breaks allowed. In such a case add up the total amount of time off and enter it in the field (in minutes).
The ability to specify the total break time is also useful if calculating physical activity with break intervals, e.g. an intensive training for one hour followed by a 15 minute break and then another hour of exercise. For a more detailed timesheet calculation, consider using our advanced work hours calculator.
Number of hours in different time periods
While calculating the number of hours between two times within a day is often of interest, sometimes longer time periods may be of interest like weeks, months, and years. All such calculations are based on a day having 24 hours, counting the number of days in the respective period and multiplying it by 24.
How many hours in a year?
A calendar year has 8,766 hours, on average. A non-leap year has 8,760 hours (365 days), while a leap year has 8,784 hours (366 days). The calculation is 365 · 24 = 8,760, and 366 · 24 = 8,784, accordingly.
How many hours in a month?
A calendar month has 730.5 hours, on average. Since months have different numbers of days, each month has a different number of hours:
- There are 744 hours in the months of January, March, May, July, August, October, and December
- There are 720 hours in the months of April, June, September, and November
- February has 672 hours in a non-leap year and 696 in a leap year
How many hours in a week?
A week is defined as having seven days and since a day has twenty four hours, a week has exactly 168 hours. The calculation is 7 · 24 = 168. The number of work hours in a week depends on the number of working days and how long each day is. For example, a five-day work week with each work day being 8 hours long is 40 work hours. With just 7 working hours per day, a five-day work week is just 35 hours.
American vs. European time
The way Europeans and Americans tell time is different, both in the way it is said and in the way it is written. Civilians in America use the hours until 12 two times in a day, while Europeans go between 00:00 and 23:59. For this reason in America people would use pm and am to distinguish what half of the day they are talking about. On the other hand, most Europeans would probably say 15:00 o’clock (instead of 3 pm). To make it even more complicated for guests from overseas though, many Europeans would also say 3 in the afternoon.
If you are new to Europe and need to deal with "military time", all you have to do is use the hours until 12 in the same way and for after 1 pm either add or subtract 12, putting pm after the result. For example, if you are meeting someone at 17:30, that would be 17:30 – 12 = 5:30 pm. If you need to find out what to write to a colleague you want to meet at 2pm, this would be 2 + 12 = 14 pm.
For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that, although similar to it, European time telling is not exactly military time. In the military 18:00 (6 pm) would be 1800. In one case it is "eighteen o’clock", in the other it is "eighteen hundred". In the military 7:00 (7 am) would be "zero seven hundred" or "oh seven hundred" (0700), while civilians in Europe would just say "seven". The stricter military way of communicating time is necessitated by the critical conditions in which it is used. Mistaking the hour or minute of an action could result in lost lives...
