Military Time Converter: 24-Hour and 12-Hour Clock

1. Pick the direction: 12-hour to 24-hour, or 24-hour to 12-hour.
2. Enter the hour and minute. For the 12-hour direction, also choose AM or PM.
3. Read the converted time, the matching 24-hour and 12-hour forms, and the spoken form.

Military time is the 24-hour clock written as four digits, from 0000 at midnight to 2359 one minute before the next midnight. It is the same system most of the world and the armed forces, aviation, hospitals and emergency services use.

The 24-hour clock removes the AM and PM labels. Each time of day has one unique reading, so there is no doubt about whether 6:00 means morning or evening. The 12-hour clock splits the day in two and needs AM or PM to tell them apart.

From midnight to noon, the 24-hour hours match the 12-hour hours, except that 12:00 AM is written 0000. After noon, you add 12 to the 12-hour hour: 1:00 PM is 1300, and 11:00 PM is 2300. Noon itself stays 1200.

The conversion is simple, fixed arithmetic on the hour. Minutes never change between the two formats.

1. Find the hour on the 24-hour clock (0 to 23) or the 12-hour clock (1 to 12 with AM or PM).
2. Apply the rule above for your direction. Keep the minutes exactly as they are.
3. For 24-hour time, pad to four digits so 7:30 AM becomes 0730, not 730.

The two anchors to remember are the edges of the day: 12:00 AM = 0000 (midnight) and 12:00 PM = 1200 (noon). Get those right and every other time follows.

Convert 2:30 PM to 24-hour military time.

Calculation: the time is PM and the hour is not 12, so add 12 to the hour: 2 + 12 = 14. The minutes stay 30. Written as four digits, that is 1430, spoken as fourteen thirty hours.

Going back: 1430 is above 1200, so it is PM. Subtract 12 from the hour: 14 - 12 = 2. The result is 2:30 PM, which matches the start.

Edge cases: 12:00 AM converts to 0000, 12:00 PM converts to 1200, and 2359 converts to 11:59 PM. These three trip people up most, because midnight and noon both use 12 on the 12-hour clock.

Only the hour, the minute and the AM or PM choice affect the result. The converter does not apply time zones or daylight saving; it changes the format of one clock reading.

The AM or PM Choice

When you go from 12-hour to 24-hour, AM or PM decides whether 12 hours are added. It is ignored the other way, because a 24-hour time already carries that information in the hour.

The Hour 12

Twelve is the only hour that does not simply add or subtract 12. 12 AM maps to 00 and 12 PM stays 12, so midnight and noon need their own rule.

Leading Zeros

A 24-hour time is always four digits. 7:05 AM is 0705, not 75 or 705. Dropping a zero changes the meaning.

The table below shows every hour on both clocks. Minutes are the same in each system, so only the hour needs converting.

Notice the pattern: midnight starts at 0000, the morning hours match, 1200 is noon, and from 1300 onward you subtract 12 to read the 12-hour hour. The time converter handles other unit changes, such as hours to minutes.

Work Schedules and Shifts

Hospitals, police, fire services and the military use 24-hour time so a shift log never reads as the wrong half of the day. A time card calculator uses the same idea for clock in and clock out.

Travel and Aviation

Flight times, train timetables and international schedules use the 24-hour clock to avoid AM and PM confusion across time zones.

Programming and Data

Computers store times on a 24-hour basis. Converting by hand helps when you read logs or set a cron job.

Everyday Planning

Any time two people might read 7:00 differently, the 24-hour form settles it. To count the gap between two times, use the time duration calculator.

1. Writing Midnight as 1200

Midnight is 0000, and noon is 1200. 12:00 AM is the start of the day, not the middle.

2. Adding 12 to a Morning Hour

AM hours from 1 to 11 do not change. 9:00 AM is 0900, not 2100. Only PM hours (except 12) add 12.

3. Dropping the Leading Zero

0730 needs the zero. Writing 730 can be read as an odd three-digit time.

4. Turning 12 PM into 2400

Noon is 1200. 2400 is not used here; the day rolls over to 0000.

5. Subtracting 12 from Every PM

Going back to the 12-hour clock, 12 PM stays 12, not 0. Only 13 to 23 subtract 12.

The conversion is exact for every valid clock time. It is fixed arithmetic, so there is nothing to round.

It is 1430. The time is PM and the hour is not 12, so add 12 to the hour (2 + 12 = 14) and keep the minutes, giving 1430, spoken as fourteen thirty hours.

Midnight 12:00 AM is 0000. The 24-hour clock starts the day at 0000, so 12 AM maps to 00, not 1200.

Noon 12:00 PM is 1200. The hour 12 is the only PM hour that does not add 12, so noon stays 1200.

0730 is 7:30 AM. Hours from 0100 to 1159 are AM, and the hour reads the same, so 0730 is simply 7:30 in the morning.

2359 is 11:59 PM, the last minute of the day. It is above 1200, so it is PM, and 23 minus 12 is 11.

For 1 PM to 11 PM, add 12 to the hour: 3 PM is 1500. For 12 PM (noon), keep 12, giving 1200. Minutes never change.

For 1 AM to 11 AM, the hour stays the same and you pad to four digits: 8:15 AM is 0815. For 12 AM (midnight), use 0000.

This converter uses 0000 for midnight, the most common convention. Some timetables write 2400 for the end of a day, but the next day starts at 0000.

No. Military time is written as four digits with no colon, such as 1430. The 12-hour clock uses a colon, such as 2:30 PM.

It gives each time one unique reading, so a logged time cannot be mistaken for the wrong half of the day. That matters for safety and record keeping.

• NIST Time and Frequency Division (National Institute of Standards and Technology; the U.S. authority on timekeeping and the 24-hour clock).
• NIST Time Services (NIST; how official time is realized and distributed).
• U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual 2016 (GPO; the federal convention for writing the 24-hour clock).
• ISO 8601 date and time format (International Organization for Standardization; 24-hour time of day).