Hours between two times
Hours between two times
Calculated in
The hours between two times is the end minus the start, less any unpaid break. Because this calculator takes dates as well as times, it handles periods that cross midnight, run over several days, or span a daylight saving change — where the answer is an hour more or less than the clock suggests.
How this is calculated
Both values are read as local dates and times, converted to absolute points in time, and subtracted. Working from absolute time rather than clock arithmetic is what makes the daylight saving cases come out right without any special handling.
On the day clocks go forward, 02:00 never happens, so an overnight shift is one hour shorter than the times imply. On the day they go back, 01:00 happens twice and the shift is an hour longer. This is the difference that matters for pay on those two days, and a note appears whenever your interval crosses one. A weekly timesheet works differently — see the time card calculator, which uses wall-clock hours because that is what people write on a timesheet.
The time zone is part of the calculation, not an assumption about you. It is recorded in the page address alongside your times, so a link you share is replayed in the zone it was worked out in — a spring-forward interval calculated in Los Angeles reads as seven hours for everyone who opens it, not eight for a reader whose own clocks never changed. Change the zone selector to recalculate the same times somewhere else.
Results are rounded to the minute. An end earlier than the start is reported as an error rather than returned as a negative number, since it almost always means the dates were entered the wrong way round.
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Frequently asked questions
How many hours are between two times?
Subtract the earlier time from the later one. Enter both above and the answer is shown in hours and minutes, decimal hours and total minutes at once.
How do I count hours across midnight?
Because this calculator takes a date as well as a time, crossing midnight needs no special handling. From 22:00 on Monday to 06:00 on Tuesday is 8 hours.
What happens on the days the clocks change?
The answer is the time that actually elapsed. Across the spring change a 22:00 to 06:00 shift is 7 hours, not 8, because an hour is skipped. Across the autumn change the same shift is 9 hours. A note appears when your interval crosses a change.
How do I subtract a lunch break?
Enter the unpaid break in minutes and it is deducted from the total.
How do I convert the result to decimal hours?
It is already shown. Decimal hours are minutes divided by 60, so 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5.