Acres to Kanals (ac to kanal)

1 acre equals 8 kanals exactly.

1 acre = 8 kanals

How to convert acres to kanals

To convert acres to kanals, multiply the number of acres by 8. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kanals by 0.125.

kanals = acres × 8

Example: 10 acres = 80 kanals.

About these units

Acre (ac)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

43,560 square feet or exactly 4,046.8564224 m², about 40% of a hectare. Originally the area a yoke of oxen could plow in a day.

Ploughland gave the acre its name: it traces to Old Norse akr, meaning cultivated land, and is related to German Acker and Latin ager. In medieval England it was a farming measure, the land one man with a team of eight oxen could plough in a day. The traditional strip was 40 perches long and 4 perches wide, which is 660 by 66 feet, or ten square chains. The shape was never the point, and the article on the unit stresses that any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre.

An acre is 43,560 square feet, 4,840 square yards or 1/640 of a square mile, close to 0.4 hectare. For Americans, it is roughly 88 by 55 yards, about 90 percent of a football field without the end zones. The Weights and Measures Act 1878 fixed it at 4,840 square yards in Britain, where trade use ended in 1995. The 1959 international acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 m²; the US survey acre, about 4,046.872 m², differed slightly, and US survey units were retired after 2022.

1 acre = 4,046.856422 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Acre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Kanal (kanal)

Indian subcontinentTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

20 marla or 5,445 square feet (505.86 m²). Used for property in Pakistan and north India.

Pakistani property listings give large plots in kanals, and the same word appears in Punjab and Haryana across the border. Under British rule the kanal was standardized as 20 marlas, which is 605 square yards or 5,445 square feet, about 505.857 square metres. That makes it exactly an eighth of an acre, so 8 kanals fill an acre, and a hectare holds about 19.77 kanals.

The kanal is the middle step in a ladder of Punjabi land units. Below it sit the marla and the sarsahi, and above it the bigha and the acre. The bigha itself is not constant: Wikipedia lists it as 4 kanals in Punjab but 5 kanals in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which shows how little land units agree between regions.

Elsewhere in India other local names fill the same role. In east India 1 kanal is given as 4 katha in the article's list, while in Punjab it is 5 biswa. The figure used here is the Raj-era 5,445 square feet. A kanal is about 0.05 hectare.

1 kanal = 505.8570528 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kanal (unit); Wikipedia: Marla (unit)

Related conversions

See all area units.