Versts to Kilometers (verst to km)

1 verst equals 1.0668 kilometers exactly.

1 verst = 1.0668 kilometers

How to convert versts to kilometers

To convert versts to kilometers, multiply the number of versts by 1.0668. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 0.9373828271 (rounded).

kilometers = versts × 1.0668

Example: 10 versts = 10.668 kilometers.

About these units

Verst (verst)

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

500 sazhens or 3,500 feet (1.0668 km). The standard Russian unit of distance before the metric system.

Travellers in Tsarist Russia read road distances in versts, a word often linked to the idea of a turn, as in the length of a furrow before a plough turns. The unit was long and not fixed: in the 17th century a verst counted 700 sazhens, about 1.49 km, and under Peter the Great it was cut to 500 sazhens.

That later verst is 3,500 English feet, or 1.0668 km, which is the figure used here. A border verst, used in land surveys, was twice as long. One English-language article lists the verst as 1,500 sazhens in a summary table, but its own metric and feet figures only work with 500, so the larger number appears to be a slip.

Finland kept its own virsta, defined in 1827 at 1,068.84 m, until metrication in the 1880s. In Russia, versts stayed on milestones and in novels well into the 20th century, and about 0.94 verst makes a kilometre.

1 verst = 1,066.8 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Verst; Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian units of measurement

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

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

Related conversions

See all length units.