Free military time converter. Convert standard 12-hour AM/PM time to 24-hour military time and back instantly. Includes the full military time chart. Used in the military, medical, aviation, and payroll. Accurate, instant, no sign-up.
12-hour AM/PM ↔ 24-hour military time
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The armed forces, pilots, and air traffic control use 24-hour time to eliminate AM/PM confusion in critical operations.
Hospitals chart medications and vitals in 24-hour time so 7:00 (AM) is never mistaken for 19:00 (PM).
Time clocks, shift schedules, and international business often use 24-hour time for unambiguous records.
Military time (the 24-hour clock) counts hours from 0 to 23 instead of restarting at 12, eliminating any AM/PM ambiguity. Midnight is 0000 ("zero hundred"), 1:00 AM is 0100, noon is 1200, and the afternoon continues 1300 (1 PM), 1400 (2 PM), up to 2359 (11:59 PM). The conversion rule is simple: for PM times from 1:00 PM to 11:59 PM, add 12 to the hour (2:30 PM → 14:30 → 1430). For AM times, the hour stays the same except 12:00 AM (midnight) becomes 0000.
The 24-hour system is standard in the US military, aviation, healthcare, public transit, and most of the world outside the US for everyday timekeeping. It's written as four digits with no colon (1430) and spoken as "fourteen thirty." The biggest sources of confusion are the two "12 o'clock" moments: 12:00 AM (midnight) = 0000, and 12:00 PM (noon) = 1200. Using 24-hour time removes the risk of scheduling a meeting or medication 12 hours off — a genuinely dangerous error in medical and operational settings, which is why these fields adopted it.
12:00 AM (midnight) = 0000. 12:00 PM (noon) = 1200. These two are the most common mistakes — midnight is the start of the day (0000), not 2400.
For PM times 1:00–11:59, add 12 to the hour: 3 PM = 1500, 6 PM = 1800, 9 PM = 2100, 11 PM = 2300. AM hours stay the same (except midnight).
1430 = "fourteen thirty." 0800 = "zero eight hundred" or "oh eight hundred." 2000 = "twenty hundred." 0000 = "zero hundred."
Most countries use 24-hour time daily. The US, Canada, Australia, and a few others favor 12-hour AM/PM in civilian life but use 24-hour in military/medical contexts.
The 24-hour clock removes the ambiguity of AM and PM by numbering hours from 00 to 23, which is why it is standard in aviation, medicine, the military and most of the world outside North America. Conversion is straightforward except at the two boundaries, which are exactly where mistakes happen. Midnight is 00:00, not 24:00, and 12 AM — despite the name — is midnight while 12 PM is noon. Those two cases account for most scheduling errors, because the intuitive reading of "12 AM" as noon is wrong.
Hours 1–11 AM → 01–11 unchanged12 PM (noon) → 12Hours 1–11 PM → add 1212 AM (midnight) → 00where:
Assumptions: Military usage often omits the colon and appends a timezone letter — 1445Z for Zulu, meaning UTC. Civil 24-hour notation keeps the colon and no suffix.
Work through an afternoon time and then the two cases that cause errors.
Result2:45 PM = 14:45 — and 12:30 AM = 00:30, not 12:30
The 12 AM / 12 PM confusion is why careful scheduling avoids both entirely, writing "noon" and "midnight" instead. A meeting set for "12 AM Friday" is genuinely ambiguous to most readers even though it is technically well-defined.