Introduction
This Hours Calculator adds up your time for you. Type a start time and an end time, and it shows how many hours and minutes passed between them. You get the answer three ways: in hh:mm, in decimal hours for payroll, and in total minutes.
Use the first tool for a single day, like a work shift. You can take out lunch and other breaks, either by typing the number of minutes or by entering the break start and end times. It also handles night shifts that cross midnight, so an 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM shift works fine. If your job rounds time, you can round to the nearest 5, 6, or 15 minutes.
Use the second tool to find the hours between two dates and times. This helps with long shifts, travel time, project time, or any gap that lasts more than one day. It shows the total in hours, minutes, and days.
Both tools show a step-by-step solution so you can see the math, plus a timeline and chart of your time. You can switch between a 12-hour clock and a 24-hour clock, copy any answer with one click, and print your results for a timesheet.
How to use our Hours Calculator
Enter your start time and end time, add any breaks, and the calculator shows your total hours worked in hh:mm, decimal hours, and total minutes, plus a timeline, chart, and step-by-step math.
Same-Day Hours Calculator
Clock Format: Pick 12-hour to use AM/PM, or pick 24-hour to use times like 17:30.
Rounding: Choose how to round your times. You can keep exact times or round to the nearest 5, 6, or 15 minutes.
Round breaks too: Check this box if you want the same rounding rule used on your break times.
Enter key acts as Tab: Check this box to jump to the next field when you press Enter. This helps when you type fast with a keypad.
Start Time: Type the time your shift began. You can skip the colon: type 830 for 8:30. Then pick AM or PM. Tap the stopwatch button to use the current time.
End Time: Type the time your shift ended, then pick AM or PM. If the end time is before the start time, the tool treats it as an overnight shift.
Deduct break time: Turn this switch on to take breaks out of your total. Turn it off to count the full shift.
Number of breaks: Pick 1, 2, or 3 breaks. A block appears for each one.
Entry method: For each break, choose "Length in minutes" if you know how long it was, or "Break start & end time" if you know the clock times.
Break length (minutes): Type how many minutes the break lasted, like 30 for a half-hour lunch.
Break start and end: Type the clock time the break began and the time it ended, with AM or PM. These breaks also show on the timeline.
Calculate, Clear, and Print: Results update as you type. Press Calculate to refresh, Clear to reset the defaults, or Print to save a copy.
Hours Between Two Dates
Clock Format: Choose 12-hour with AM/PM, or the 24-hour clock.
Start Date: Pick the day your time began.
Start Time: Type the time of day it began, then pick AM or PM. The stopwatch button fills in today's date and time.
End Date: Pick the day your time ended. It must be the same day or later than the start.
End Time: Type the time of day it ended, then pick AM or PM. You will get the total in hh:mm, decimal hours, minutes, and days plus hours plus minutes.
What This Hours Calculator Does
An hours calculator finds how much time passed between a start time and an end time. It is the fastest way to add up a work shift, a study session, or any block of time. You get the answer three ways: in hours and minutes (like 08:30), in decimal hours (like 8.50), and in total minutes (like 510).
How Time Math Works
Clock time is base 60, not base 10. That is why subtracting 8:30 from 5:30 PM is tricky in your head. The simple trick is to turn each clock time into minutes after midnight, subtract, then change the answer back into hours.
- 8:30 AM = (8 × 60) + 30 = 510 minutes
- 5:30 PM = (17 × 60) + 30 = 1,050 minutes
- 1,050 − 510 = 540 minutes = 9 hours
Decimal Hours vs. Hours and Minutes
Payroll systems almost always use decimal hours, because you can multiply them straight by a pay rate. To get decimal hours, divide the minutes by 60. So 30 minutes is 0.50 hours, not 0.30 hours. Here are common ones:
| Minutes | Decimal Hours |
|---|---|
| 10 min | 0.17 |
| 15 min | 0.25 |
| 20 min | 0.33 |
| 30 min | 0.50 |
| 45 min | 0.75 |
Breaks and Unpaid Lunch
Under U.S. federal law, meal periods, typically lasting at least 30 minutes, are not work time and do not have to be paid.5 Short breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes are different: they count as paid work hours.5 Your gross span is clock-in to clock-out. Your net hours are the gross span minus the breaks. A 9:00 span with a 30 minute lunch gives 8.5 paid hours. You can enter a break as a number of minutes, or as a start and end time if you clocked out and back in.
Overnight Shifts
If the end time is earlier on the clock than the start time, the shift crossed midnight. In that case you add 24 hours (1,440 minutes) before subtracting. A shift from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM is 8 hours, not a negative number. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, workers who are covered and not exempt get overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek, at no less than time and one-half.3 The Act does not require extra pay just for working on a Saturday or Sunday.3 Check the Overtime Calculator once your weekly total passes 40.
Rounding Rules
Some employers round punches so timecards look clean. U.S. federal rules recognize rounding start and stop times to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest tenth or quarter of an hour.2 A tenth of an hour is 6 minutes, and a quarter hour is 15 minutes. Rounding to the nearest mark goes both up and down. Federal rules accept it only when, over time, workers are still paid for all the time they actually work.2 A 7:57 AM punch rounds to 8:00 AM under the quarter hour rule.
Hours Between Two Dates
When a job or event runs past one day, you count whole days first and then the leftover time. Each full day is 24 hours.1 That is 1,440 minutes. So from Monday 8:30 AM to Wednesday 5:30 PM is 2 days (2,880 minutes) plus 9 hours, which is 57 hours in all. If you only need working days in that stretch, the Business Days Calculator skips weekends for you. Crossing time zones? Line up the clocks first with the Time Zone Calculator.
Where People Use It
Timesheets and payroll, freelance and client billing, overtime checks, shift planning, volunteer hour logs, study and practice hours, and tracking how long a task or trip really took.