📏 Length Converter
Convert between metric, imperial, nautical and traditional Indian length units instantly.
Why length conversion still trips people up
India runs on the metric system officially — every school textbook, every road sign, every government form uses metres and kilometres. But step into a builder's site, a tailor's shop, a furniture showroom, or an old property document, and you're just as likely to hear "sq. gaz," "12 feet plot," or "do hath ka kapda." Add in imported product specs that list dimensions in inches, and it's easy to end up converting by rough guesswork — which is fine until you're ordering a 6-foot sofa for a room you measured in metres, or a tailor cuts fabric a full hath short because "hath" meant something different to him than it did to the supplier.
How this converter works
Enter any value, pick the unit you have and the unit you need, and the result updates instantly — no page reload, no ads to click through. Every conversion runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere. Hit the swap button to flip the two units when you realise you picked them backwards (it happens to everyone).
Standard conversion factors used
| Unit | Equal to |
|---|---|
| 1 Inch | 2.54 cm |
| 1 Foot | 0.3048 m (12 inches) |
| 1 Yard | 0.9144 m (3 feet) |
| 1 Mile | 1.60934 km (1,760 yards) |
| 1 Nautical Mile | 1.852 km (used in aviation & shipping) |
| 1 Hath (Cubit) | ≈45.72 cm (traditional Indian unit, roughly elbow-to-fingertip) |
| 1 Gaz | 0.9144 m — same length as a yard, standardised during British-era land surveys and still printed on older Indian property deeds |
Where India-specific units still show up
"Gaz" isn't a museum piece — it's alive in North Indian real estate. Plot sizes in cities like Delhi, Jaipur, and Lucknow are still quoted in "gaz" or "sq. gaz" on registry papers and even fresh listings, especially for older colonies developed before metric measurements were standard on paper. Since 1 gaz equals exactly 1 yard (0.9144 m), a "200 gaz plot" converts the same way a "200 sq. yard plot" would per side — useful to know before you assume a builder's quote is in square metres and end up comparing the wrong numbers.
"Hath," meanwhile, survives mostly in tailoring, religious ritual measurements (temple cloth, yagna items), and rural land talk, where a "do hath" (two hath) width is still a common way to describe fabric or narrow plots. The modern standardised value (~45.72 cm) comes from British-era attempts to fix what was originally a body-based measurement — which is exactly why hath varied slightly from region to region before standardisation, and why it's always worth double-checking with whoever you're dealing with if the stakes are high (a tailor's "hath" and a rural land record's "hath" aren't always guaranteed to match exactly).
Common real-world conversions
Furniture and interiors: Imported furniture catalogues (especially from the US) list dimensions in inches and feet. A "72-inch sofa" is exactly 182.88 cm — useful to know before you measure your living room wall in metres and try to eyeball whether it'll fit.
Fabric and tailoring: A "6-yard saree" is 5.4864 metres of fabric — the yard measurement is a holdover from the British textile trade era and is still how most Indian saree and suit-piece lengths are described, even though the fabric itself is cut and priced using metric metres at most modern mills.
Travel and fitness: Fitness trackers and imported treadmills often default to miles. If your treadmill says you did "3.1 miles," that's a clean 5 km — the number app developers use for a "quick 5K" setting.
Aviation and shipping: Pilots and ship navigators plan in nautical miles because 1 nautical mile equals exactly 1 minute of latitude on the globe, making chart plotting far simpler than working in kilometres — which is why flight distances quoted in nautical miles look shorter than the same route measured in km.