Kilometers to Miles (km to mi)
1 kilometer equals 0.6213711922 miles (rounded).
How to convert kilometers to miles
To convert kilometers to miles, multiply the number of kilometers by 0.6213711922. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply miles by 1.609344.
miles = kilometers × 0.6213711922
Example: 10 kilometers = 6.213711922 miles.
About these units
Kilometer (km)
1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.
A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.
Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre
Mile (mi)
5,280 feet or 1,760 yards, exactly 1,609.344 meters. This is the statute (international) mile used on US and UK roads.
A thousand paces gave the mile its name. It descends from the Latin mille passus, the Roman mile, by way of Old English mil and Middle English myle. For centuries after Rome, miles of many lengths coexisted; a sixteenth-century Mercator map, for example, shows small, medium and large Flemish miles on a single scale bar. The English statute mile was fixed by an Act of Parliament under Elizabeth I in 1593, which declared that a mile contains eight furlongs, or 5,280 feet.
The 1959 international yard and pound agreement made that mile exactly 1,609.344 meters. A slightly longer US survey mile, about 1,609.347 meters, lingered in American land surveys and was slated for retirement from 1 January 2023. Today the mile is the road unit of the United Kingdom, the United States, Liberia and Myanmar, along with several territories such as the Bahamas, Belize, Guam and the US Virgin Islands. In Canada it survives chiefly in rail transport and horse racing.
1 mile = 1,609.344 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Mile; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Miles to kilometers (reverse)
- Kilometers to meters
- Kilometers to centimeters
- Kilometers to millimeters
- Kilometers to inches
- Kilometers to feet
- Kilometers to yards
- Kilometers to micrometers
- Kilometers to nanometers
- Kilometers to nautical miles
- Kilometers to pixels (CSS)
- Kilometers to light-years
- Kilometers to picometers
- Meters to miles
- Centimeters to miles
- Millimeters to miles
- Inches to miles
- Feet to miles
- Yards to miles
- Micrometers to miles
- Nanometers to miles
- Nautical miles to miles
- Pixels (CSS) to miles
- Light-years to miles
- Picometers to miles
See all length units.