Calculate the number of hours and minutes between two times, or between two full date-and-time values. Perfect for tracking work shifts, travel duration, and scheduling.
Enter a start and end time to find the total hours and minutes between them. If the end time is earlier than the start time, the end is assumed to be the following day.
Select start and end dates with times to calculate the exact number of hours and minutes between them. Time defaults to 12:00 AM if left blank.
Is 11:00 PM to 12:00 AM one hour or thirteen? One, because 12:00 AM is midnight, the very start of a day, and 12:00 PM is noon; plenty of people assume it is the other way round. The calculator follows the real 12-hour convention and turns any pair of times into hours and minutes.
Each time is first changed into minutes after midnight. For AM, hour 12 becomes 0 and others stay as they are; for PM, hour 12 stays 12 and others get 12 added. Then minutes = hour x 60 + minutes. The elapsed time is end - start, and if the end is equal to or earlier than the start, 1,440 minutes (a day) are added. Hours = minutes / 60, shown to at most four decimals with trailing zeros dropped. The date-and-time section works differently: it builds two real date-times in your device's time zone, subtracts them, divides by 60,000 milliseconds and rounds to whole minutes. The end must be later than the start.
What changes if one input moves. Take the example below at 8.75 hours. Start 30 minutes earlier, at 8:00 AM, and you add 0.5 hours to get 9.25. Each minute moved at either end is 1/60 of an hour, about 0.0167. Flip only the end from PM to AM and 5:15 AM is earlier than 8:30 AM, so it counts as the next morning: 1,245 minutes, or 20.75 hours. One dropdown adds 12 hours. Make the two times identical and you get 1,440 minutes, 24 hours, not zero.
Worked example. 8:30 AM to 5:15 PM. Start = 8 x 60 + 30 = 510 minutes. End = (5 + 12) x 60 + 15 = 1,035 minutes. Difference = 1,035 - 510 = 525 minutes, and 525 / 60 = 8.75 hours, which is 8 hours 45 minutes. Nothing is rounded here. If a 30-minute lunch was unpaid, subtract it yourself: 495 minutes, or 8.25 hours.
The first section treats an end that is equal to or earlier than the start as the next day. If you meant no elapsed time, there is nothing to calculate; if you meant a full day, 24 is correct.
Use hh:mm with a colon and two-digit minutes, and an hour from 1 to 12. Entries like 17:30, 0:30 or 830 are rejected. Put the AM or PM in the dropdown.
No. It reports elapsed time from start to finish. For paid work, take unpaid breaks off yourself or use the Time Card Calculator, which has a break field.
A blank time becomes 12:00 in whichever AM or PM is selected. The start defaults to AM, so it is midnight, but the end defaults to PM, so it is noon. Check both dropdowns before relying on a blank.
In the date section, yes, using your device's time zone. In a US Eastern browser, 12:00 AM on 8 March 2026 to 12:00 AM on 9 March 2026 gives 23 hours, 1,380 minutes. The time-only section ignores daylight saving.