Convert Military Time
Enter a time in either 12-hour or 24-hour format and get the instant conversion.
How the Military Time Converter Works
Convert any time in four simple steps.
Enter the Time
Input the hour and minute in 12-hour format. Select AM or PM from the dropdown.
Click Convert
Press "Convert" to see the instant military time equivalent. The conversion runs automatically as you type.
See the Result
View both the 4-digit military time, the spoken pronunciation, and the conversion formula used.
Reverse Convert
Use the reverse converter below to convert from military time back to standard 12-hour format.
Understanding Military Time
The 24-hour clock and why it's used worldwide.
What is military time?
Military time uses the 24-hour clock format where hours run from 00 to 23. There is no AM or PM — every hour of the day has a unique number. Midnight is 0000, noon is 1200, and 11 PM is 2300.
How to convert: Standard → Military
For AM times: use the same hour with a leading zero. 9:15 AM = 0915. For PM times: add 12 to the hour. 3:45 PM = 1545 (3+12=15). Two special cases: 12:00 AM = 0000, 12:00 PM = 1200.
How to convert: Military → Standard
For hours 00–11: use the hour directly and add AM. 0730 = 7:30 AM. For hours 13–23: subtract 12 and add PM. 2015 = 8:15 PM. Special case: 0000 = 12:00 AM, 1200 = 12:00 PM.
Reading military time aloud
Military time is read digit by digit. 0900 = "zero nine hundred." 1430 = "fourteen thirty." 0015 = "zero zero fifteen." Exact hours (e.g., 0800) include the word "hundred." Compare the same moment across regions with the time zone converter.
Complete Military Time Chart
Full 24-hour conversion reference for every hour of the day.
AM hours (midnight to noon)
The AM hours are straightforward. The military time is the hour with a leading zero: 1:00 AM = 0100, 9:00 AM = 0900, 11:00 AM = 1100. The only special case is midnight: 12:00 AM = 0000.
PM hours (noon to midnight)
For PM, add 12 to the hour: 1:00 PM = 1300, 5:00 PM = 1700, 11:00 PM = 2300. Noon itself stays the same: 12:00 PM = 1200. This is where most conversion errors happen.
Quick mental math
For PM times, just subtract 2 from the military hour's ones digit: 1500 → 5-2=3 → 3:00 PM. Or, take the last two digits of the military hour and subtract 12: 20-12=8 → 8:00 PM. Whichever trick sticks.
When to Use a Military Time Converter
Essential for anyone working with 24-hour time formats.
Military & Defense
All branches of the armed forces use 24-hour time exclusively. Orders, briefings, and logs are all in military time to prevent AM/PM confusion.
Healthcare & Medical
Hospitals and medical facilities use military time for charting, medication schedules, and shift changes. An error between 8 AM and 8 PM could be life-threatening.
Aviation & Travel
Pilots, air traffic controllers, and airlines use 24-hour time for all schedules and communications. Flight times are always posted in military time internationally.
Law Enforcement
Police reports, dispatch records, and incident logs all use 24-hour time. Precision in time-stamping evidence is critical for legal proceedings.
International Business
Most countries outside the US use 24-hour time as the standard format. Understanding military time is essential for global communication and scheduling.
IT & Programming
Server logs, cron jobs, and database timestamps use 24-hour format. Developers need to convert between formats regularly for debugging and scheduling.
Step-by-Step Walkthrough
Four conversions covering every rule the 24-hour clock has, including the two special cases that account for most errors.
A logistics coordinator converts four dispatch times between formats: 7:45 AM, 3:20 PM, 12:30 AM and 12:15 PM.
Morning times keep their hour
7:45 AM → 0745Any AM hour from 1 to 11 converts by padding to two digits and nothing else. The hour value itself is unchanged, which makes this the easy half of the clock.
Running total0745 ("oh seven forty-five")
Afternoon times add twelve
3:20 PM → 3 + 12 = 15 → 1520PM hours from 1 to 11 have twelve added. This is the only arithmetic the conversion ever requires — everything else is formatting or a special case.
Running total1520
Midnight becomes zero, not twelve
12:30 AM → 003012 AM is hour 00, the first hour of the day. Adding twelve here would give 1230, which is half past noon — twelve hours wrong, and a genuinely dangerous error on a schedule.
Running total0030
Noon stays at twelve
12:15 PM → 121512 PM is hour 12 and needs no adjustment at all. The rule "add twelve to PM" would give 2415, which is not a valid time — noon is the exception to it.
Running total1215
Convert back to check
1520 → 15 − 12 = 3 → 3:20 PM 0030 → hour 00 → 12:30 AMReversing the conversion should recover the original. For 24-hour values of 13 or above, subtract twelve and label PM; 00 becomes 12 AM.
Running totalBoth round-trip correctly
7:45 AM is 0745, 3:20 PM is 1520, 12:30 AM is 0030 and 12:15 PM is 1215. The two midday cases are the only ones that break the simple add-twelve rule.
Common Mistakes and Pro Tips
Mistakes that quietly corrupt your numbers
Converting 12:30 AM to 1230 by applying the add-twelve rule.
12 AM is hour 00, so 12:30 AM is 0030.
Why it matters: This is a twelve-hour error at the most consequential point on the clock. On a delivery schedule or medication chart it moves an event from just after midnight to just after noon — the same day, entirely the wrong half of it.
Converting 12:15 PM to 2415.
Noon is already hour 12, so 12:15 PM is 1215.
Why it matters: Hours only run 00 to 23, so 24 is not a valid hour at all. The error is at least self-announcing — an invalid reading is easier to catch than a plausible one — but it still stops a system from parsing the value.
Writing 7:45 AM as 745 without the leading zero.
Pad to four digits: 0745.
Why it matters: The four-digit form is what makes 24-hour times sortable and unambiguous. Dropping the leading zero breaks string sorting, so 745 orders after 1520 in any system that compares text rather than numbers.
Reading 2400 as a valid end-of-day time in ordinary use.
Use 0000 for midnight at the start of a day, or 2359 for the last minute of one.
Why it matters: While 2400 appears in some military and aviation conventions to mean the end of a day, most software rejects it. Where a day boundary is being expressed, 0000 and 2359 are unambiguous everywhere.
Pro tips
Learn the two exceptions, not the whole table
Everything follows from three rules: AM stays, PM adds twelve, and 12 AM is 00 while 12 PM is 12. Memorising the exceptions covers the entire clock.
Always pad to four digits
Write 0900, never 900. Four digits is what makes 24-hour times sort correctly and parse reliably, which is most of the reason the format exists.
Know how it is spoken
0745 is "zero seven forty-five", 1520 is "fifteen twenty". Times ending in 00 take "hundred" — 1400 is "fourteen hundred".
Recognise it as the international standard
The 24-hour clock is the norm across most of the world and in ISO 8601. Using it in written schedules removes AM/PM ambiguity for international readers entirely.
Prefer it wherever mistakes are costly
Healthcare, aviation, transport and emergency services standardised on it for one reason: there is no way to confuse midnight with midday.
Combine with a date for full clarity
ISO 8601 writes 2026-08-12T15:20. Date plus 24-hour time in that order sorts correctly as plain text, which is why logs and filenames use it.
Complete 12-Hour to 24-Hour Conversion Table
Every hour of the day in both formats, with the spoken form and the two special cases marked.
| 12-hour | 24-hour | Spoken | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12:00 AM | 0000 | Zero hundred | Midnight — hour 00 |
| 1:00 AM | 0100 | Zero one hundred | |
| 2:00 AM | 0200 | Zero two hundred | |
| 3:00 AM | 0300 | Zero three hundred | |
| 4:00 AM | 0400 | Zero four hundred | |
| 5:00 AM | 0500 | Zero five hundred | |
| 6:00 AM | 0600 | Zero six hundred | |
| 7:00 AM | 0700 | Zero seven hundred | |
| 8:00 AM | 0800 | Zero eight hundred | |
| 9:00 AM | 0900 | Zero nine hundred | |
| 10:00 AM | 1000 | Ten hundred | |
| 11:00 AM | 1100 | Eleven hundred | |
| 12:00 PM | 1200 | Twelve hundred | Noon — no change |
| 1:00 PM | 1300 | Thirteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 2:00 PM | 1400 | Fourteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 3:00 PM | 1500 | Fifteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 4:00 PM | 1600 | Sixteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 5:00 PM | 1700 | Seventeen hundred | Add 12 |
| 6:00 PM | 1800 | Eighteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 7:00 PM | 1900 | Nineteen hundred | Add 12 |
| 8:00 PM | 2000 | Twenty hundred | Add 12 |
| 9:00 PM | 2100 | Twenty-one hundred | Add 12 |
| 10:00 PM | 2200 | Twenty-two hundred | Add 12 |
| 11:00 PM | 2300 | Twenty-three hundred | Add 12 |
| 11:59 PM | 2359 | Twenty-three fifty-nine | Last minute of the day |
No rows match that filter.
Only the first and thirteenth rows break the add-twelve pattern — midnight and noon. Once a schedule is in 24-hour format, the shift calculator can compute shift lengths from it directly.
The 24-Hour Clock in Context
Where it came from, who uses it, and why it keeps winning.
Why it is called "military time"
The name is largely an American usage. In most of the world the 24-hour clock is simply how time is written, and it carries no military association at all.
Armed forces adopted it because ambiguity in a time is operationally dangerous, and the same reasoning later drove its adoption in aviation, healthcare, rail and emergency services.
Strict military convention differs slightly from civilian use: it often omits the colon entirely, may append a time-zone letter such as Z for UTC ("Zulu"), and is spoken as digits rather than as a clock reading.
ISO 8601 and why sorting matters
The international standard for representing dates and times writes them largest unit first: 2026-08-12T15:20:00. That ordering has a useful property — the text sorts into chronological order.
A folder of files named this way is automatically in date order. A log sorted as plain text is automatically in time order. No parsing is required for either.
Twelve-hour time cannot do this. "3:20 PM" sorts before "7:45 AM" alphabetically, which is why virtually every machine-readable format uses the 24-hour clock.
The genuine ambiguity of 12 AM and 12 PM
The confusion is not carelessness — the 12-hour system is genuinely ill-defined at these two points. "AM" means ante meridiem, before midday, and "PM" means after it. Noon itself is neither.
The convention that 12 PM means noon and 12 AM means midnight is arbitrary and inconsistently applied, which is why airlines, contracts and hospitals frequently avoid both.
Common workarounds are to write "12 noon" and "12 midnight" explicitly, or to shift the time to 11:59 or 12:01 to remove any doubt. The 24-hour clock sidesteps the problem entirely: 0000 and 1200 cannot be confused.
How systems actually store time
Almost no software stores a 12-hour reading internally. Times are held as 24-hour values, or more often as a count of seconds from a fixed epoch, and the AM/PM display is generated only at the point of presentation.
This is why a form that accepts "3:20 PM" converts it immediately on submission, and why an incorrectly parsed AM/PM produces a value that is wrong by exactly twelve hours rather than slightly off.
When entering data into any system, the 24-hour form is closer to what will actually be stored — which removes one conversion, and with it one opportunity to be twelve hours out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the Military Time Converter.
What is military time?
Military time is a timekeeping convention using the 24-hour clock format. Hours run from 00 (midnight) to 23 (11 PM). For example, 1:00 PM becomes 1300 and 6:30 AM becomes 0630. It eliminates the ambiguity of AM and PM.
How do I convert standard time to military time?
For AM hours: keep the same number but add a leading zero if needed. 9:30 AM = 0930. For PM hours: add 12 to the hour. 2:45 PM = 14:45 (2+12=14). Special cases: 12:00 AM (midnight) = 0000, 12:00 PM (noon) = 1200.
How do I convert military time to standard time?
For hours 00–11: the hour stays the same, add AM. 0930 = 9:30 AM. For hours 13–23: subtract 12, add PM. 1700 = 5:00 PM (17-12=5). Special cases: 0000 = 12:00 AM (midnight), 1200 = 12:00 PM (noon).
What is 0000 in standard time?
0000 (or "zero hundred hours") is 12:00 AM — midnight. Some branches use 2400 for the end of a day and 0000 for the start of a new day on the same midnight moment.
Why do the military and hospitals use 24-hour time?
The 24-hour format eliminates AM/PM confusion — critical in contexts where a scheduling error could be dangerous. In military operations and medical settings, mistaking 8 AM for 8 PM could have serious consequences.
Is military time the same as 24-hour time?
Almost. Standard 24-hour time uses a colon (14:30) while military time traditionally does not (1430). Both use the same numbering system. Our converter supports both notations.
Is 12:00 AM midnight or noon?
Midnight, and in 24-hour time it is 0000. Noon is 12:00 PM, or 1200. This pair causes more conversion errors than the rest of the clock combined, which is one of the main reasons the 24-hour format exists.
How do I convert 12:30 AM to 24-hour time?
It becomes 0030. The 12 AM hour is hour 00, so no twelve is added. Applying the usual add-twelve rule would give 1230, which is half past noon — a twelve-hour error at the worst possible point.
Is 2400 a valid time?
Some military and aviation conventions use 2400 to mean the end of a day, but most software rejects it since hours only run 00 to 23. Use 0000 for the start of a day and 2359 for the last minute of one.
Why write 0900 instead of 900?
Four digits keep 24-hour times sortable and unambiguous. Without the leading zero, text sorting places 900 after 1520, which breaks any system that compares times as strings rather than numbers.
How is 24-hour time spoken aloud?
Digit by digit, with "hundred" for whole hours — 0745 is "zero seven forty-five" and 1400 is "fourteen hundred". Military usage often adds a zone letter, such as "Zulu" for UTC.