Convert Centimeters to Kilometers

About converting Centimeters to Kilometers

Centimeters (cm) and Kilometers (km) are both units of length, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Centimeters figure by 0.00001. Ten Centimeters comes to 0.0001 Kilometers, and a hundred works out at 0.001 Kilometers.

Rule of thumb: going from Centimeters to Kilometers divides, so the figure always shrinks — it takes about 100,000 Centimeters to make a single Kilometer. If your answer came out bigger, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Centimeter?

A centimeter is one hundredth of a meter. It is the everyday metric unit for body measurements, paper sizes, furniture and anything else you would reach for a ruler to check — small enough to be precise about a person’s height without resorting to decimals, large enough that you are not counting hundreds of them. Most of the world lists height in centimeters rather than feet and inches, so 180 cm is instantly readable as "about six foot" to a large part of the planet.

What is a Kilometer?

A kilometer is exactly 1,000 meters — the "kilo" prefix means a thousand, as it does everywhere in the metric system. It is the unit almost every country uses for road distances and speed limits, the main exceptions being the United States and the United Kingdom, which still post miles. Its convenience is that it sits at a human scale for travel: a brisk walk covers roughly a kilometer in ten to twelve minutes, which is why city planners talk about the "fifteen-minute" neighbourhood in these terms.

To put both in perspective: a standard credit card is 8.56 centimeters wide, while a kilometer is about a twelve-minute walk.

The converter above updates as you type, and the table lists common values for quick reference. Need the opposite direction? Use the Kilometers to Centimeters converter, or browse all Length converters.