Military Time Converter

How to convert standard time to military time

1. Midnight (12:00 AM) becomes 0000.
2. 1:00 AM–11:59 AM keeps the same hour, zero-padded — 8:05 AM becomes 0805.
3. Noon (12:00 PM) becomes 1200.
4. 1:00 PM–11:59 PM adds 12 to the hour — 3:00 PM becomes 15 + 00 = 1500.

Minutes carry straight across in both directions; only the hour and the AM/PM label change.

How to convert military time to standard time

1. 0000 is 12:00 AM (midnight).
2. 0001–1159 is that same hour, AM.
3. 1200 is 12:00 PM (noon).
4. 1201–2359 — subtract 12 from the hour and label it PM. 1830 minus 12 hours is 6:30 PM.

The two-digit hour always ranges 00–23 and the two-digit minute always ranges 00–59; there's no AM/PM marker because the hour itself is unambiguous.

Full 24-hour military time chart

Every hour on the hour, both notations side by side.

For a half-hour value, keep the same pattern: 1530 is 3:30 PM, and 0245 is 2:45 AM.

How to say military time out loud

Say the digits as two pairs. "00" minutes is spoken as "hundred"; other minute values are read as their own number.

"Hundred" replaces the colon — it signals that the next two digits are hours, not a fraction of an hour. That's also why 1500 is "fifteen-hundred," not "fifteen-zero-zero."

Why military time exists

A 12-hour clock repeats every label twice a day, which is why "meet at 8" needs an AM/PM qualifier to be unambiguous. Military time removes that ambiguity by giving each of the 24 hours in a day its own four-digit number, which is why it's standard in the U.S. armed forces, aviation, emergency services, hospitals, and rail and transit schedules — and why most of the world's countries use the same 24-hour format on clocks, timetables, and digital displays by default.

Common mistakes

• Writing 12 AM as 1200. Midnight is 0000; 1200 is noon.
• Dropping the leading zero. 8:00 AM is 0800, not 800 — the four-digit form avoids confusion with a two- or three-digit number.
• Adding a colon. Military time notation is 1500, not 15:00, though some 24-hour digital clocks display the colon for readability.
• Forgetting to add 12 for the PM hours. 4:00 PM is 1600, not 0400.

Using military time for payroll

Once a shift is in 24-hour form, elapsed time is simpler because there's no AM/PM to track — an 0800–1630 shift is just 1630 − 0800. Need the actual hours worked, with breaks subtracted? Use calculate hours worked, or convert the result to decimal hours with the hours to decimal converter. For any two 24-hour times, the time duration calculator finds the gap directly, and the add time calculator can add or subtract a duration from a 24-hour start time.