Millions to Billions (short Scale) (M to B)
1 million equals 0.001 billions (short scale) exactly.
How to convert millions to billions (short scale)
To convert millions to billions (short scale), multiply the number of millions by 0.001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply billions (short scale) by 1,000.
billions (short scale) = millions × 0.001
Example: 10 millions = 0.01 billions (short scale).
Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.
About these units
Million (M)
One million (10⁶).
Million comes from Italian. Old Italian milione was built from mille, a thousand, plus an augmentative ending, so it began as something like a big thousand. The name proved useful as a stem: by 1475 the French mathematician Jehan Adam was already building larger names from it, bymillion and trimillion, for 10¹² and 10¹⁸. The short and long scales agree on the million itself, 1,000,000 or 10⁶, and diverge only for the larger names. The SI prefix mega- stands for 10⁶.
Millions are hard to feel. Counting out a million items one by one is famously laborious, yet a million seconds lasts only about 11.57 days. A billion seconds, by contrast, is roughly 31.7 years.
1 million = 1,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Million; Wikipedia: Names of large numbers; BIPM SI Brochure, 9th edition (2019)
Billion (short Scale) (B)
One thousand million (10⁹). The meaning used in the US, UK and most English-speaking countries today.
For decades British and American speakers meant different things by billion. The short-scale sense, a thousand million, took hold in the United States in the 19th century, while Britain kept the older meaning of a million million. From the 1950s the short scale spread through British technical writing and journalism, and Winston Churchill had remarked in 1941 that for practical financial purposes a billion was a thousand millions.
The official break came on December 20, 1974. Asked in Parliament whether ministers would be required to use the traditional British meaning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson answered no, explaining that billion was now used internationally for 1,000 million and that using it any other way would cause confusion. He conceded it could still be read as a million million and asked colleagues to avoid ambiguity. Today a billion is 10⁹, matching the SI prefix giga, and the UN projected that world population would reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.
1 billion (short scale) = 1,000,000,000 pieces (exactly).
Sources: Hansard, 20 Dec 1974: Billion (Definition), written answer; Wikipedia: Billion; United Nations: Day of Eight Billion
Related conversions
- Billions (short scale) to millions (reverse)
- Millions to pieces
- Millions to dozens
- Millions to lakhs
- Millions to crores
- Millions to pairs
- Millions to hundred
- Millions to gross
- Millions to thousand
- Millions to trillions (short scale)
- Millions to score
- Millions to half dozens
- Millions to quadrillions
- Pieces to billions (short scale)
- Dozens to billions (short scale)
- Lakhs to billions (short scale)
- Crores to billions (short scale)
- Pairs to billions (short scale)
- Hundred to billions (short scale)
- Gross to billions (short scale)
- Thousand to billions (short scale)
- Trillions (short scale) to billions (short scale)
- Score to billions (short scale)
- Half dozens to billions (short scale)
- Quadrillions to billions (short scale)
See all counting & quantity units.