Hours to Seconds Converter

What this converter does

This turns a number of hours into seconds. Hours are how people talk about time, but scripts, logs, and timing calculations usually want the same span in plain seconds. Enter the hours and the seconds come straight back, decimals handled for any part-hour.

How to use it

1. Enter Hours. Type the number of hours.

Press Calculate and the equivalent in seconds appears.

Where the 3,600 comes from

An hour is 60 minutes, and each minute is 60 seconds, so an hour holds 60 times 60, which is 3,600 seconds. To convert hours to seconds, then, you multiply by 3,600. So 1 hour is 3,600 seconds, 2 hours is 7,200, and half an hour is 1,800. The number grows because a second is the far smaller unit, and the relationship is exact.

Why seconds are the unit code wants

Seconds are the base unit for most timing in software. Timeouts and durations are often set in seconds, calculations are simplest when everything is in one unit, and logs and systems regularly record elapsed time that way. So when you have a span in hours and need it for a script, a config, or a duration calculation, this gets it into the form those expect. Two hours becomes the 7,200 the code is asking for.

An example

Take 2 hours. Multiply by 3,600 and you have 7,200 seconds. A duration of 1.5 hours is 5,400 seconds, and a quarter of an hour, 0.25 hours, is 900 seconds. The single multiply turns a readable hour figure into the seconds a calculation runs on.

Questions people ask

How many seconds are in an hour?

3,600, which is 60 minutes times 60 seconds. So to convert hours to seconds you multiply by 3,600.

What is 2 hours in seconds?

7,200 seconds, since two lots of 3,600 is 7,200.

What is 0.25 hours in seconds?

900 seconds, since a quarter of 3,600 is 900. That is 15 minutes.

How do I go from seconds back to hours?

Divide the seconds by 3,600, or use a seconds-to-hours converter.