Kilograms to Quintals (kg to q)

1 kilogram equals 0.01 quintals exactly.

1 kilogram = 0.01 quintals

How to convert kilograms to quintals

To convert kilograms to quintals, multiply the number of kilograms by 0.01. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply quintals by 100.

quintals = kilograms × 0.01

Example: 10 kilograms = 0.1 quintals.

About these units

Kilogram (kg)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of mass. Since 2019 it is defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant, replacing the old platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris.

Oddly for a base unit, the kilogram began life as a derived one. In 1793 revolutionary France defined the grave as the mass of one litre of water, and a decree of 1795 then replaced it with the kilogramme, a name built from the Greek khilioi (a thousand) and gramma, a Late Latin word for a small weight. In 1799 a platinum cylinder, the Kilogramme des Archives, became the physical standard, matching a cubic decimetre of water at its densest, around 4 degrees Celsius. In 1889 the metric community adopted a platinum-iridium cylinder made in 1879, the International Prototype of the Kilogram, nicknamed Le Grand K.

The kilogram is still the only SI base unit with a prefix in its name. Because SI forbids stacked prefixes, a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram rather than a microkilogram, so every mass prefix is attached to the gram. Calibrating every national standard against one object in a vault near Paris meant that all of them drifted relative to it, so in November 2018 member states voted to tie the kilogram to a fixed value of the Planck constant. The change took effect on 20 May 2019. Day to day nothing shifted, but the definition no longer depends on a single piece of metal.

The kilogram is the reference unit for weight & mass on this site.

Sources: NIST: Kilogram introduction (SI redefinition); Wikipedia: Kilogram

Quintal (q)

Metric (SI)Traditional unit (still used in some regions)

100 kilograms. Still used for crop yields in India, France and parts of Europe and South America.

Romance languages gave this unit its name, from the idea of a hundred base units, while German and Russian forms such as Zentner and tsentner follow the same logic. Before metrication a quintal was a hundred of some local pound, so it ranged widely: about 48.95 kilograms in France, around 46 in Spain, about 58.75 in Portugal and 50 in Germany.

The metric quintal fixed the figure at 100 kilograms, the value used here. Farmers in France, Italy, Poland, India and Indonesia still quote yields and prices in it, and wholesale grain in Ethiopia and Eritrea is priced per quintal, as it is in Brazil and some other South American countries. The United States wrote it into law in 1866 as 100 kilograms, though neither the US nor NIST uses it now. English-speaking trade once used the word as another name for the hundredweight, and in Newfoundland a 112 pound quintal was the salt-cod unit into the 1960s.

1 quintal = 100 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Quintal

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