Military Time Converter
Convert between 12-hour and 24-hour (military) time formats.
Disclaimer: The results provided by this tool are estimates for informational purposes only. Actual values may vary. Please verify important calculations independently.
How the 24-hour clock is structured
Military time runs from 0000 to 2359 in a single unbroken sequence, with the first two digits representing the hour and the last two the minutes. Midnight is 0000, noon is 1200, and the final minute before the next midnight is 2359. Because the format never repeats an hour, there is no need for the AM or PM suffix that the 12-hour clock uses to disambiguate morning from evening. A time like 0730 can only ever mean half past seven in the morning, and 1930 can only ever mean half past seven in the evening.
The conversion rules are symmetric. To go from 12-hour to military time, pad AM hours with a leading zero and leave the minutes alone — 7:15 AM becomes 0715. For PM hours other than noon, add twelve to the hour and drop the suffix — 3:45 PM becomes 1545. Noon stays at 1200 and midnight becomes 0000, not 2400. Going the other direction, military hours below 13 are read directly, while those 13 or higher have twelve subtracted and a PM suffix appended. These rules make the system deterministic and easy for software and spreadsheets to handle.
Everyday situations that demand military time
Hospitals schedule medication rounds in military time because mixing up a 10 AM dose with a 10 PM dose can have serious consequences. Airline itineraries, train timetables, and shipping manifests use it for the same reason — a flight departing at 0515 cannot be confused with one at 1715, even by a traveller who is half-asleep or reading across timezones. Emergency dispatchers log incident times in military time so that the ordering of events is never ambiguous when the log is reviewed later. Most of the world outside North America writes civilian clocks the same way by default.
Two subtleties trip people up. The transition at midnight is the most common: it is 0000, not 2400, although some timetables use 2400 specifically to mean "the end of this day" rather than "the start of the next". The other is that military time in the United States is traditionally written without a colon — 1345 rather than 13:45 — while elsewhere in the world the colon is standard. Both forms mean the same thing, and a good converter accepts either. When in doubt, write the colon version, because it is unambiguous across readers and document formats.