ScaleTrip

Travel through scale.

Kilometres to miles

Convert kilometres to miles and metres with the exact international-mile formula.

A different unit, the same stretch of road

One mile is longer than one kilometre: exactly 1.609344 km. Think of choosing a longer ruler. You need fewer of those rulers to measure the same road.

1 mi = 1.609344 km1 km
The bars use one common scale. One mile is about 1.61 times the length of one kilometre.

Work through a 10-unit example

  1. Use division for a longer unit

    10 ÷ 1.609344 ≈ 6.2137 mi

    Ten kilometres needs fewer than ten mile units. A result smaller than 10 is a useful reasonableness check.

  2. Keep only useful decimal places

    For a quick explanation, say about 6.21 miles. Keep the original input if you want to convert back.

km
Converted result0.621371 mi

1,000 m

Formula used

Miles = kilometres ÷ 1.609344. One international mile is defined as exactly 1.609344 kilometres.

Miles to kilometres

Work through a few examples

1 km
≈ 0.621371 mi
5 km
≈ 3.106856 mi
10 km
≈ 6.213712 mi
42.195 km
≈ 26.218757 mi

The conversion factor is exact; displayed results round to six decimal places. Use the original input when converting back to avoid an extra rounding error.

Kilometres, metres and miles

A kilometre is exactly 1,000 metres. Here mi means the international mile, exactly 1,609.344 metres, not the nautical mile used at sea and in aviation. Changing the unit leaves the physical length unchanged.

NIST — Exact international mile conversion

Put the converted distance in context

A kilometre at neighbourhood scale · Walking and running a 5K · Ten-kilometre comparisons · The exact marathon distance