What military time is and how to read it
Military time runs on a 24-hour clock. The hours go from 0000 to 2359. There is no colon and no AM or PM. Midnight is 0000. Noon is 1200. One in the afternoon is 1300. The rule is simple: for any PM hour except 12 PM, add 12 to the standard hour. So 3 PM becomes 1500. For AM hours, keep the number and add a leading zero if it is below 10. So 8 AM becomes 0800.
People say these times in a set way. 1430 is "fourteen thirty." 0800 is "zero eight hundred." 1500 is "fifteen hundred." This spoken form is common in the US armed forces and in many jobs that run around the clock, such as dispatch, nursing, and aviation.
This page is different from a plain clock because it converts both directions and shows the whole chart. You can type 1500 and get 3:00 PM, or type 3:00 PM and get 1500. The tool reads the computer's clock to keep its own time, so the conversion stays correct even if the tab is in the background.
Military time vs. 24-hour time in Europe
Military time and European 24-hour time mean the same thing. The difference is how they are written. Military time uses four digits with no colon: 1430. European 24-hour time uses a colon and often a leading zero: 14:30. Both say the same moment. If you see 09:00 on a train ticket in France, that is 0900 in military form. If you see 1730 on a US military schedule, that is 17:30 in European form.
One more difference is the leading zero. In military time, 8 AM is always 0800, not 800. In European 24-hour time, you may see 8:00 or 08:00. Both are correct in that system. The converter accepts either style, so you can type 8:00, 08:00, 0800, or 8 AM and get the right answer.
Midnight edge cases: 0000 and 2400
Midnight is the tricky part. The start of a new day is 0000. The end of a day is sometimes written as 2400. Both mean midnight, but they sit at different ends of the same date. If a shift ends at 2400 on Monday, that is the same moment as 0000 on Tuesday. Many schedules use 2400 to avoid confusion about which day the shift belongs to. This converter treats 2400 as the end of the day and 0000 as the start of the next day.
Noon is not an edge case. It is always 1200. The rule about adding 12 does not apply to 12 PM. If you add 12 to 12, you get 24, which is wrong. So 12 PM stays 1200, and 12 AM becomes 0000.
Full military time chart
The table below shows every hour from midnight to 11 PM. Use it to check a time fast.
| Standard time | Military time | European 24-hour |
|---|---|---|
| 12:00 AM | 0000 | 00:00 |
| 1:00 AM | 0100 | 01:00 |
| 2:00 AM | 0200 | 02:00 |
| 3:00 AM | 0300 | 03:00 |
| 4:00 AM | 0400 | 04:00 |
| 5:00 AM | 0500 | 05:00 |
| 6:00 AM | 0600 | 06:00 |
| 7:00 AM | 0700 | 07:00 |
| 8:00 AM | 0800 | 08:00 |
| 9:00 AM | 0900 | 09:00 |
| 10:00 AM | 1000 | 10:00 |
| 11:00 AM | 1100 | 11:00 |
| 12:00 PM | 1200 | 12:00 |
| 1:00 PM | 1300 | 13:00 |
| 2:00 PM | 1400 | 14:00 |
| 3:00 PM | 1500 | 15:00 |
| 4:00 PM | 1600 | 16:00 |
| 5:00 PM | 1700 | 17:00 |
| 6:00 PM | 1800 | 18:00 |
| 7:00 PM | 1900 | 19:00 |
| 8:00 PM | 2000 | 20:00 |
| 9:00 PM | 2100 | 21:00 |
| 10:00 PM | 2200 | 22:00 |
| 11:00 PM | 2300 | 23:00 |
Worked example: 1500 military time
Suppose you see 1500 on a schedule. The hour is 15. That is past 12, so it is a PM time. Subtract 12 from 15 to get 3. The minutes are 00. So 1500 is 3:00 PM. In European form, it is 15:00. If you need to add a duration, say a 90-minute meeting that starts at 1500, the end time is 1630. That is 4:30 PM. The time calculator handles that kind of addition.
You can also go the other way. If a friend says "meet me at 7:45 PM," add 12 to 7 to get 19. Keep the minutes. So 7:45 PM is 1945. Say it as "nineteen forty-five."
How this converter keeps time
The converter does not count ticks. It reads the current time from your computer's clock. That means it stays accurate when the tab is in the background or the device sleeps. The display refreshes several times a second. If you reload the page, a running timer on the same page survives because the end time is stored in the browser for that tab. The tab title shows the remaining time while a timer runs, so you can read it from another tab. Keyboard shortcuts: Space starts and pauses a timer or the stopwatch. On the stopwatch, L records a lap and R resets.
For date math, every day is 24 hours here. Daylight saving changes are not counted, so a day never has 23 or 25 hours. That keeps the math honest. If you need to convert between time zones, the time zone converter uses the browser's built-in zone database. Abbreviations like EST and EDT name fixed offsets, but a place like New York switches between them, so a zone name is more reliable.