What this calculator does
An acre is one of those units everyone has heard of and almost nobody can picture. This acre calculator turns any number of acres into square feet, square metres, square yards and hectares, so a block of land described in acres can be compared against a house, a paddock or a build site measured in whichever unit you actually think in.
The acre itself is a fixed, historical unit: exactly 43,560 square feet, whatever the shape of the block. A perfectly square acre is about 66 metres on each side, but real acres are rarely square, so the total area is the number that actually matters for buying, fencing or planning land.
The formula
Multiply the number of acres by the fixed conversion factor for each unit: 43,560 square feet, 4,046.8564224 square metres, 4,840 square yards, or 0.40468564224 hectares per acre. The soccer pitch comparison divides the area in square metres by 7,140, the area of a standard 105 by 68 metre pitch.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Acre | A unit of land area equal to 43,560 square feet, regardless of the shape of the plot. |
| Hectare | A metric unit of area equal to 10,000 square metres, roughly 2.47 acres. |
| Square yard | An area 3 feet by 3 feet, used alongside acres in some older land descriptions. |
The inputs explained
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Acres | The number of acres you want converted, as a decimal if the block is not a whole number of acres. |
When to use it
Picturing a block of land for sale
A listing quoted in acres is easier to picture once it is converted to square metres or square feet, especially when comparing it against a house footprint or a suburban block size.
Comparing a rural or farm listing to a metric block
Rural land is often still quoted in acres while urban blocks are quoted in square metres; converting both to the same unit makes the comparison honest.
Getting a feel for scale
Knowing that one acre is roughly 0.4 of a standard soccer pitch gives an intuitive sense of size that a raw square-metre figure does not.
Worked examples
Every figure in the tables below is produced by this page’s own calculator at build time, so the numbers and the tool always agree. Select any row to load that scenario.
How many square feet, square metres and hectares in a range of acreages
A range of common land sizes, from a large suburban block to a small farm.
| Acres | Square feet | Square metres | Hectares |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25 | 10,890 | 1,012 | 0.1012 |
| 0.5 | 21,780 | 2,023 | 0.2023 |
| 1 | 43,560 | 4,047 | 0.4047 |
| 2.5 | 108,900 | 10,117 | 1.012 |
| 5 | 217,800 | 20,234 | 2.023 |
| 10 | 435,600 | 40,469 | 4.047 |
Questions
How much is an acre in square feet?
Exactly 43,560 square feet. That figure is fixed by definition and does not depend on the shape of the block, whether it is a long thin strip or a perfect square.
Is an acre bigger or smaller than a hectare?
An acre is smaller than a hectare. One hectare is about 2.47 acres, so a hectare is roughly two and a half times the area of an acre.
What does an acre look like in real terms?
A perfectly square acre is about 66 metres, or 208.7 feet, on each side. Most real blocks are not square, so the same acre can be a long narrow strip or a wide shallow rectangle depending on the boundary.
How many soccer pitches is an acre?
About 0.4 of a standard 105 by 68 metre pitch, since a full pitch covers roughly 7,140 square metres and an acre is about 4,047 square metres.
To convert land measured in hectares back and forth to acres, see the hectares to acres calculator. For working out a stocking rate or land-per-animal figure once you know the acreage, see the cattle per acre calculator.