Hours to seconds converter, for timeouts, timers and logs.

To convert hours to seconds, multiply the hours by 3,600. So 1 hour is 3,600 seconds, 2 hours is 7,200 seconds and 24 hours is 86,400 seconds. The number 3,600 comes from 60 minutes in an hour times 60 seconds in a minute.

How to use the converter

1. Type the amount in the Hours (h) box. A decimal such as 2.5 or a fraction such as 3/4 works.
2. The big result shows Seconds (s). Use Decimals in the side column to fix the number of places.
3. The cards under the result show the same time in other forms. The cards show minutes, days and weeks.
4. Type in the second box, or press the swap button, to go the other way.
5. Click a row in Common values to load it. Copy result, Copy link, Copy table and Print chart keep the answer. Start again resets the box.

When people need seconds

Some settings only take seconds: a cache time, a session timeout, a video position, a countdown or a log filter. If the setting wants one hour, you type 3,600. If it wants a day, you type 86,400. If it wants a week, you type 604,800. It is easy to be off by a zero, so check the number against the table below.

Worked examples

• A 1.5 hour film. 1.5 × 3,600 = 5,400 seconds.
• A 36 hour timeout. 36 × 3,600 = 129,600 seconds, which is 1.5 days.
• A quarter of an hour. 0.25 × 3,600 = 900 seconds, the same as 15 × 60.
• An hour and 10 minutes. 1 hour is 3,600 seconds and 10 minutes is 600 seconds, so the total is 4200 seconds. Typing 1.1667 hours gives about the same, 4,200.12 seconds, but the long decimal rounds.
• Back the other way. 10,800 seconds ÷ 3,600 = 3 hours. Press the swap button and type 10800.

Where the numbers come from

A minute is 60 seconds, an hour is 3,600 seconds and a day is 86,400 seconds. NIST SP 811, Appendix B.9 prints all three as exact factors. Checked 27 Oct 2026. The converter keeps them as exact fractions and rounds only the last digit shown.

Mistakes to avoid

The two usual errors are multiplying by 60 once, which gives minutes, and multiplying by 3,600 for a time that was already in minutes. Check the unit of the number you start with. Also keep the small numbers straight. 1,000 seconds is 16.67 minutes, not an hour, because an hour needs 3,600.

If you start from minutes, divide first by checking the unit: 90 minutes is 90 × 60 = 5,400 seconds, and 90 hours is 90 × 3,600 = 324,000 seconds. The two answers differ by a factor of 60, so the unit matters.

Related pages: Hours to minutes, Seconds to minutes and the Unix timestamp converter.