📏 Meters to Feet Converter

Converting metres to feet

One metre is 3.280839895 feet, and one foot is 0.3048 metres.

feet = metres × 3.280839895

Getting the precision right

One metre is 3.280839895 feet, derived from the exact inch. Rounding to 3.3 is 0.6% high; rounding to 3 is 8.5% low and should never be used for anything that matters. A useful mental anchor is that 3 metres is just under 10 feet.

Where each unit is used

Metres are the SI unit and standard for construction, sport and science worldwide. Feet remain in American construction and in aviation altitude everywhere, so a building's height is often quoted in both depending on who is speaking.

Values worth knowing

A 100 m sprint is 328 feet. A 25 m swimming pool is 82 feet. Everest at 8,849 m is 29,032 feet.

Where the two units came from

The metre was originally intended as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator through Paris. The surveying expedition that measured it, carried out through the French Revolution, got it slightly wrong — the real quarter-meridian is about 10,002 km, so the metre is roughly 0.2 mm short of its own definition. It has since been redefined twice, most recently as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, which fixes it far more precisely than the Earth ever could.

Round the result to the precision your own work needs. These converters carry the full factor, which is useful for checking but rarely what you want to write down.

Most people arrive here on the way to something else, so it is worth knowing the cm to inches, which handles the next part, and the feet to cm, which covers the case just beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)