24-hour ↔ 12-hour time
Military Time Converter
Type a standard time on the left or a military time on the right and the other side follows. Full 24-hour chart below, plus the two rules that trip everyone up: midnight and noon.
A free military time converter, both directions
Enter a time on either side and the other side updates as you type. The converter accepts loose input on both — 2pm, 2:00 PM,midnight, and noon all work on the standard side;1400, 14:00, and even a bare 14 all work on the military side. There is no calculate button, no signup, and nothing is sent anywhere; the maths runs in your browser.
The full 24-hour reference chart is directly below the converter. Underneath that, the four rules that actually matter — how to convert each way, how to handle midnight and noon, and how minutes carry across.
Military time chart — the full 24 hours
Every whole hour of the day in both formats. Midnight is 0000 and noon is 1200, which are the two hours people most often trip on because they do not follow the “add 12 for PM” rule.
| Military | Standard |
|---|---|
| 00:00 · Midnight | 12:00 AM |
| 01:00 | 1:00 AM |
| 02:00 | 2:00 AM |
| 03:00 | 3:00 AM |
| 04:00 | 4:00 AM |
| 05:00 | 5:00 AM |
| 06:00 | 6:00 AM |
| 07:00 | 7:00 AM |
| 08:00 | 8:00 AM |
| 09:00 | 9:00 AM |
| 10:00 | 10:00 AM |
| 11:00 | 11:00 AM |
| Military | Standard |
|---|---|
| 12:00 · Noon | 12:00 PM |
| 13:00 | 1:00 PM |
| 14:00 | 2:00 PM |
| 15:00 | 3:00 PM |
| 16:00 | 4:00 PM |
| 17:00 | 5:00 PM |
| 18:00 | 6:00 PM |
| 19:00 | 7:00 PM |
| 20:00 | 8:00 PM |
| 21:00 | 9:00 PM |
| 22:00 | 10:00 PM |
| 23:00 | 11:00 PM |
How to convert military time to standard time
The rule set is four lines long.
- Hour 00 → 12 AM (midnight).
- Hour 01–11 → keep the hour, add AM.
- Hour 12 → keep as 12 PM (noon).
- Hour 13–23 → subtract 12, add PM.
Minutes never change. 1730 is 5:30 PM because 17 − 12 = 5, and the 30 carries over. 0830 is 8:30 AM because 08 is in the morning range and 30 stays. The colon in 17:30 is optional; both notations mean the same instant.
How to convert standard time to military time
The mirror rule set.
- 12:00 AM → 0000 (midnight).
- 1:00 AM – 11:59 AM → pad the hour to two digits; drop AM.
- 12:00 PM → 1200 (noon).
- 1:00 PM – 11:59 PM → add 12 to the hour; drop PM.
2:00 PM is 1400. 8:15 AM is0815. 11:59 PM is 2359. The only case that ignores the rule is the two 12s at the top of the clock — they replace with 0000 and 1200 rather than following the AM/PM math.
Common military-time answers people search for
| Military | Standard | Read aloud |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 | 12:00 AM | zero hundred hours |
| 0600 | 6:00 AM | oh six hundred hours |
| 0900 | 9:00 AM | oh nine hundred hours |
| 1200 | 12:00 PM | twelve hundred hours |
| 1300 | 1:00 PM | thirteen hundred hours |
| 1400 | 2:00 PM | fourteen hundred hours |
| 1500 | 3:00 PM | fifteen hundred hours |
| 1600 | 4:00 PM | sixteen hundred hours |
| 1700 | 5:00 PM | seventeen hundred hours |
| 1800 | 6:00 PM | eighteen hundred hours |
| 1900 | 7:00 PM | nineteen hundred hours |
| 2000 | 8:00 PM | twenty hundred hours |
| 2100 | 9:00 PM | twenty-one hundred hours |
| 2200 | 10:00 PM | twenty-two hundred hours |
| 2300 | 11:00 PM | twenty-three hundred hours |
Midnight and noon — the two clock traps
12 AM is midnight, the start of the day, and maps to0000. 12 PM is noon, the middle of the day, and maps to 1200. Neither follows the “add 12 for PM” rule that works for every other hour, which is why so many meeting invites for “12 AM Wednesday” end up twelve hours off. Military time removes that ambiguity: 0000 is unmistakably the start of the day and 1200 is unmistakably lunchtime.
A rarer variant is 2400. It sometimes appears in schedules to mean the end of the day — a shift ending at 2400 on Tuesday is the same instant as one starting at 0000 on Wednesday. Most systems, this converter included, use 0000 throughout to avoid the ambiguity.
Why 24-hour time exists
Twenty-four hour time was adopted by the military, aviation, emergency services, hospitals, and transport for one reason: every minute of the day has exactly one label. There is no 7 o’clock that could mean morning or evening, no12 that could mean noon or midnight. In a control tower, an operating room, or a written order, a single missing suffix could otherwise send a mission or a medication to the wrong side of the day.
In most of the world outside the United States, 24-hour time is the everyday default rather than the specialist notation. Transport timetables in Europe, Asia, and Latin America all use it, which is why a bus at 14:30 in a Paris timetable is simply half past two in the afternoon.
Nautical, Zulu, and military time
Nautical time is 24-hour time on a ship, kept against the local time zone. Zulu time is 24-hour time in UTC, written with a trailing Z: 1400Z is 14:00 UTC everywhere. Aviation and international military coordination use Zulu because it removes the second ambiguity — which time zone — that 24-hour time alone does not.
Converting military time in Excel
Excel stores time as a fraction of a day, so once a cell is formatted as time the display is the only difference between 12-hour and 24-hour.
| Situation | Formula or format |
|---|---|
| Show a time in 24-hour form | Format cells → Time → 13:30, or Custom hh:mm |
| Show a time as text without a colon | =TEXT(A1,"hhmm") |
Turn 1400 text back into a real time | =TIMEVALUE(LEFT(A1,2)&":"&RIGHT(A1,2)) |
| Difference between two 24-hour times | =B1-A1, formatted as hh:mm |
Related calculators
- Time duration calculator — find hours and minutes between two times or dates in either 12- or 24-hour form.
- Hours to decimal calculator — turn 7:45 into 7.75 and back for payroll.
- Time card calculator — clock in and out for a whole week and get hours, breaks, and pay.
- How to calculate hours worked — the full method by hand, overnight shifts included.
Frequently asked questions
What is 1400 in military time?
1400 is 2:00 PM. To convert any afternoon or evening military time to standard, subtract 12 from the hour and add PM. 1400 − 12 = 2, so 2:00 PM. Times from 0100 to 1259 keep their hour and use AM or PM; 0000 is 12:00 AM (midnight) and 1200 is 12:00 PM (noon).
How do you convert military time to standard time?
Split the four digits into an hour and minutes. If the hour is 00, replace it with 12 and use AM. If the hour is 01–11, keep it and use AM. If the hour is 12, keep it and use PM. If the hour is 13–23, subtract 12 and use PM. The minutes never change. 1730 becomes 5:30 PM. 0830 becomes 8:30 AM. 0000 becomes 12:00 AM.
How do you convert standard time to military time?
For AM times, keep the hour and pad it to two digits — 8:15 AM becomes 0815, and 12:00 AM becomes 0000. For PM times, add 12 to the hour — 2:00 PM becomes 1400, and 11:59 PM becomes 2359. The one exception is 12:00 PM, which stays 1200 rather than becoming 2400.
What is 12 AM and 12 PM in military time?
12 AM is 0000 (midnight, the start of the day). 12 PM is 1200 (noon). These are the two clock-face moments people most often get wrong because the 12 does not follow the “add 12 for PM” rule. Military time avoids the ambiguity entirely — 0000 and 1200 are distinct and unmistakable.
How are minutes handled in military time?
Minutes are identical in both systems. The colon is optional but common in written form — 2:30 PM is written as 1430 or 14:30, and both mean the same thing. Fifteen minutes past two in the afternoon is 1415; forty-five past two is 1445. Only the hour changes when you convert.
Why does the military use 24-hour time?
To eliminate AM/PM ambiguity in orders and logs, where a missed suffix could send a mission to the wrong side of noon. Aviation, emergency services, hospitals, transport schedules, and most computer systems use 24-hour time for the same reason: every minute of the day has exactly one label, so a written time cannot be misread.
Is military time the same as 24-hour time?
For everyday purposes, yes. Both run from 0000 to 2359. The one small difference is punctuation: military time is usually written without a colon (1400) and read aloud as “fourteen hundred hours,” while 24-hour time in most of the world is written with a colon (14:00) and read as “fourteen hundred” or “two in the afternoon.” The underlying clock is identical.
How do I read 0000 versus 2400?
Both refer to midnight, but 0000 is the standard reading — the start of the new day. 2400 sometimes appears in schedules to mean the end of the previous day (e.g. a shift ending at 2400 on Tuesday is the same instant as one starting at 0000 on Wednesday). Most systems, this converter included, treat midnight as 0000 to avoid the ambiguity.
What is nautical or Zulu time?
Nautical time is 24-hour time on a ship, measured against the local time zone. Zulu time is 24-hour time in UTC — “1400Z” means 14:00 UTC regardless of where the reader is. Zulu is the standard for aviation and international military coordination because it removes the second ambiguity that 24-hour time alone does not: which time zone.
How do I convert military time in Excel?
Enter the time as 14:00 (with a colon) and Excel treats it as 24-hour time automatically. To display the result in 24-hour form, format the cell as hh:mm. To go from a 12-hour value to 24-hour, use =TEXT(A1,"hh:mm"). To go from 24-hour text back to a time value for arithmetic, use =TIMEVALUE(A1). Excel does not care about AM/PM once the cell is formatted as time — the display is the only difference.