Convert Miles to Kilometers

About converting Miles to Kilometers

Miles (mi) and Kilometers (km) are both units of length, so converting between them is a single multiplication: multiply your Miles figure by 1.6093. Ten Miles comes to 16.0934 Kilometers, and a hundred works out at 160.9344 Kilometers.

Rule of thumb: going from Miles to Kilometers multiplies, so the figure always grows — one Mile is already 1.6093 Kilometers. If your answer came out smaller, you have the conversion the wrong way round.

What is a Mile?

The mile descends from the Roman mille passus — a thousand paces, each pace being two steps. Its modern length of exactly 1,609.344 meters looks arbitrary because it is: the figure was fixed by the 1959 international yard and pound agreement, which defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meters and let the mile fall out of it at 1,760 yards. It remains the road-distance unit of the United States and the United Kingdom, and the unit runners think in for road races.

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 mile takes most people fifteen to twenty minutes to walk, 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 Miles converter, or browse all Length converters.