Military time converter

How the military time converter works

Military time, also called army time or the 24-hour clock, counts the hours of the day from 0000 at midnight to 2359 one minute before the next midnight, with no AM or PM. Type a time in either box and the other one updates as you type. The result shows the time as four military digits, on the 24-hour clock with a colon, in 12-hour time, and the way it is said aloud.

The military box reads 0730, 730, 17:30 and 1730 hours. A leading zero always means the morning, so 0730 is 7:30 AM. The 12-hour box reads 5:30 PM, 5:30pm, 7am, noon and midnight. If you leave off AM or PM there, 5:30 could be either 0530 or 1730, so the converter asks rather than guesses.

How to convert military time by hand

The morning is the easy half: up to 1159, military time is 12-hour time with a leading zero and no colon. In the afternoon and evening, subtract 12 from the hour. Going the other way, add 12 to any PM hour from 1 PM to 11 PM, so 9:15 PM is 9 + 12 = 21, written 2115.

The two hours that trip people up are the twelves. 12 PM is noon, which is 1200, and 12 AM is midnight, which is 0000. So 12:30 AM is 0030, not 1230.

Midnight: 0000 or 2400?

Both, depending on which end of the day you mean. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology suggests 0000 for midnight at the start of a day and 2400 for midnight at the end of one, and notes that 12 AM and 12 PM are ambiguous enough that they are better avoided (NIST, times of day FAQ). A shift that ends at 2400 on Friday ends at the same moment as 0000 on Saturday. There is no 2401: one minute after midnight is 0001.

How to say military time

• Whole hours use “hundred”. 1000 is “ten hundred”, 2100 is “twenty-one hundred” and midnight is “zero hundred”.
• A leading zero is said. 0600 is “zero six hundred”, not “six hundred”.
• Minutes follow as a number. 1730 is “seventeen thirty” and 2359 is “twenty-three fifty-nine”.
• “Hours” is often added at the end. “Seventeen hundred hours” and “seventeen hundred” mean the same time.

These follow Military.com’s guide to the 24-hour clock. Habits differ between services and units, so you will hear small variations.

Zulu time

A Z after a military time, as in 1730Z, means the time is given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the time at the zero meridian. Z is “Zulu” in the phonetic alphabet, and the name is still used in military, nautical and aviation settings (NIST, UTC and Zulu time). To read a Zulu time locally, add or subtract your time zone’s offset from UTC. The converter on this page works on clock times only and does not change time zones.

Written and maintained by the DoneThat team. The chart is generated from the converter’s own code, and the sources above were last checked on 3 November 2026.

Frequently asked questions