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Military Time Chart and Converter
Type a time in either format and see the other instantly, or read the whole 24 hours in the chart below. There is a printable version if you want one on the wall.
12-hour to military
Military to 12-hour
The full chart
All 24 Hours, Quarter by Quarter
Every hour with its quarter-hour marks. If you need a different minute, the minutes never change between formats — only the hour does.
| Military | 12-hour | :15 | :30 | :45 | Spoken (on the hour) |
|---|
Getting it right
The Four Mistakes People Make
Turning Noon into 2400
Noon is 1200. It is the middle of the day, so it sits in the middle of the range. Midnight is 0000, at the start. The instinct to make midday the "big" number is the single most common error.
Adding Twelve to Morning Times
Morning hours never change. 9 AM is 0900, not 2100. Only PM times get twelve added, and only the ones from 1 PM onwards.
Dropping the Leading Zero
Military time is always four digits. Seven in the morning is 0700, never 700. The fixed width is part of what makes it unambiguous when read quickly or heard over a poor connection.
Forgetting the Zone
A four-digit time still needs a zone if it will be read somewhere else. Append Z for UTC, or state the local zone. Precision about the hour is wasted if the reader guesses the offset.
Step by step
How to Use the Military Time Converter
Convert time like a calculator: choose a time format, enter the hour and minute, and read the answer immediately. Select time format, choose hour and minute, then see all formats at once.
Choose 12-hour for AM/PM input. Choose 24-hour for 00–24 hour input. The hour list changes based on your format choice, so you cannot enter an hour that does not exist in the format you picked. If you use 24-hour input and pick 00, the tool treats it as midnight at the start of the day.
Both boxes update as you type, so you never need to press a calculate button — changing either side immediately updates the other.
Printable Chart
A vertical chart (easy to read) with 24-hour, military, and regular time. Download or preview the printable military time chart PDF at any time using the button above — it is sized for A4 and US Letter.
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Answers
Conversion Questions
Converting both ways, the 2400 problem, seconds and zone letters.
How do I convert 12-hour time to military time in my head?
For morning times, keep the hour and add a leading zero if it is a single digit: 8:15 AM is 0815. For afternoon and evening, add 12 to the hour: 3:45 PM is 1545. The only two you memorise rather than calculate are midnight, 0000, and noon, 1200.
And the other way round?
If the first two digits are 12 or less, it is already the 12-hour figure — add AM, except at 12 where it is PM for noon and AM for midnight. If they are 13 or more, subtract 12 and add PM: 1930 becomes 7:30 PM.
Is 2400 a valid time?
Not really. The day runs from 0000 to 2359, and the instant after 2359 is 0000 on the following date. Some schedules write 2400 to mean "the end of this day", which is understandable but reintroduces exactly the ambiguity the 24-hour clock removes. Where a deadline falls at midnight, writing 2359 or naming the next day's 0000 is clearer.
Do military times include seconds?
Usually not in speech or on a schedule, where four digits are the norm. Where seconds matter — in aviation, navigation and operations logs — six digits are used, so 143005 is thirty minutes and five seconds past two in the afternoon.
What is the printable chart for?
Wall reference. The PDF lists every hour and the common minute intervals in both formats, sized to print cleanly on A4 or US Letter. Nursing stations, training rooms and workshops tend to want one pinned up while people are still learning the conversion.
Why do some written times end in a letter?
That letter is the time zone. Z means UTC, and each other letter maps to a 15-degree band of longitude. A time written 0600Z is six in the morning UTC no matter where you read it, which is why operations spanning several zones write times that way rather than in local time.