Military time converter
Type 1830, 18:30 or 6:30 PM, get the other format instantly.
How do I convert military time to regular time?
For hours 13 to 23, subtract 12 and add PM: 1830 is 18 − 12 = 6:30 PM. Hours 01 to 11 are AM as they are, 12 is noon (12 PM), and 00 is the midnight hour (12 AM).
How do I convert regular time to military time?
For PM times after noon, add 12 to the hour: 6:30 PM → 1830. For AM, keep the hour and write it with two digits: 7:05 AM → 0705. 12:30 AM is 0030.
How do you say military time?
Hour then minutes, with "hundred" for whole hours: 0600 is "zero six hundred", 1830 is "eighteen thirty", 2105 is "twenty-one zero five". "Zero" is the usual word in the minutes and in the hour, although "oh" is also heard in everyday speech.
Is midnight 0000 or 2400?
Both appear: 0000 is the start of a day and 2400 the end of the previous one — 2400 on Monday is the same moment as 0000 on Tuesday. Schedules usually use 0000, or 2359 to avoid confusion.
Is military time the same as 24-hour time?
Nearly — both count hours 00 to 23. The military writes it without a colon (1830) and often adds a time-zone letter, like 1830Z for UTC; civilian 24-hour time is written 18:30.
What is 12 AM and 12 PM in military time?
12 AM is 0000 (the first hour after midnight), and 12:30 AM is 0030. 12 PM is 1200 (noon), and 12:30 PM is 1230. The twelve o'clock hours are the ones people convert wrongly, because they do not follow the add-12 or subtract-12 rule: noon hours stay as they are and the midnight hour becomes 00.
How do I calculate time between two military times?
Convert both to hours and minutes and subtract, adding 24 hours if the end is earlier than the start. From 2245 to 0615 is 7 hours 30 minutes. The hours calculator on this site does this and also takes breaks off.
Do I need a colon or the word hours?
No colon is needed: 0600 is the full time. In speech, a time on the hour adds "hundred" ("zero six hundred"), and the word "hours" is often added at the end ("eighteen thirty hours"). Written timestamps for civilians usually use a colon, as in 18:30.
How the conversion works
Military time counts the hours from 00 to 23 as a four-digit number: two digits for the hour and two for the minutes. From 1:00 PM onward the 12-hour clock restarts at 1, so the 24-hour hour is the 12-hour hour plus 12. Minutes never change. In the other direction, subtract 12 from any hour above 12 and add PM. The one hour that breaks the pattern is 12 itself: 1200 is 12:00 PM, and 0000 is 12:00 AM.
Reference conversions
The hours that cause the most mistakes: 0000 = 12:00 AM; 0030 = 12:30 AM; 1200 = 12:00 PM; 1230 = 12:30 PM; 1300 = 1:00 PM; 2359 = 11:59 PM. The converter also accepts 2400 as the end of a day, the same moment as 0000 of the next day.
Common mistakes
Subtracting 12 from 1200 gives 0, which does not exist on a 12-hour clock, so 1200 stays 12 PM. Confusing 0000 with 1200 is the other half of the same error: if a 12-hour time is ambiguous, write noon or midnight and the date. A third mistake is treating the last two digits as a fraction of an hour: they are plain minutes, from 00 to 59, so 1875 is not a valid time and 1830 is 18 hours 30 minutes, not 18.30 hours. Finally, 24-hour notation does not say which time zone you are in; across zones, state the zone as well.
Sources: the 12-hour and 24-hour clock conventions are standard timekeeping practice; the chart above shows all 24 hours. Related: time zone converter, hours calculator, time card calculator.