Land Area Calculator
Enter your plot dimensions and choose a shape to get the area in any unit you need. Supports rectangles, triangles, trapezoids, circles and parallelograms. Results are instantly converted to square feet, square meters, acres, hectares and several other land units. Add a price per unit to estimate total land value.
How to measure land area
Land area is the two-dimensional extent of a plot of ground. For a rectangular field, it is simply length multiplied by width; a square plot with sides of 100 ft has an area of 10,000 sq ft, or about 0.23 acres. Triangular plots (common at road junctions) use the formula A = 0.5 x base x height, where height is the perpendicular distance from the base to the opposite corner. Trapezoidal plots, which have one pair of parallel sides of different lengths, use A = 0.5 x (base1 + base2) x height. Circular lots or circular irrigation zones use A = pi x radius squared. Any irregular shape can be broken into a combination of these simple shapes, measured separately, then added together.
Understanding acres, hectares and other land units
The acre is the standard US and UK unit for farm and real estate transactions. One acre equals 43,560 square feet, or about 4,047 square meters. A hectare, used in most of the rest of the world, is exactly 10,000 square meters, which is 2.471 acres. Survey chains and rods are older surveying units still referenced in deeds and legal descriptions in the US: one chain is 66 feet, one rod (or perch) is 16.5 feet, and an acre is exactly 10 square chains or 160 square rods. Knowing these equivalences lets you translate between a legal property description and the plain metric or imperial area your buyer, lender, or agronomist needs.
Estimating land value with price per unit
Once you know the area, multiplying by a price per unit gives a first-pass land value. Farmland prices are typically quoted per acre in the US and per hectare in Europe and Australasia, while urban lots are often quoted per square foot or square meter. Enter your local price per unit in the optional field to see the total estimate. Note that market prices vary enormously by location, zoning, access to utilities and soil quality; this figure is a starting point for comparison, not a substitute for a professional appraisal.
Tips for measuring irregular plots
Most real-world plots are not perfect rectangles. A common field technique is to divide the plot into simpler shapes on paper or on a surveyed sketch, calculate each area, and sum them. GPS devices and smartphone apps can trace boundaries and compute area automatically; mapping tools that let you click points on a satellite image work the same way. For legal transactions, a licensed surveyor uses precise instruments and is the only method whose result carries legal authority. This calculator handles the most common shapes directly: for anything more complex, divide and conquer.
Common land area unit conversions
| Unit | Symbol | Equivalent in m² |
|---|---|---|
| Square meter | m² | 1 |
| Square foot | ft² | 0.092903 |
| Square yard | yd² | 0.836127 |
| Acre | ac | 4,046.86 |
| Hectare | ha | 10,000 |
| Square kilometer | km² | 1,000,000 |
| Square mile | mi² | 2,589,988 |
| Square chain | sq ch | 404.686 |
| Square rod | sq rd | 25.293 |
Each row shows how many square meters equal 1 unit of the listed measure.
Frequently asked questions
How many square feet are in an acre?
Exactly 43,560 square feet make one acre. This is a fixed conversion: 1 acre = 43,560 ft² = 4,046.86 m² = 0.4047 ha. A square acre would have sides of about 208.7 feet each.
How do I convert square meters to acres?
Divide the area in square meters by 4,046.856. For example, 10,000 m² / 4,046.856 = 2.471 acres. Equivalently, multiply by 0.000247105. This calculator performs the conversion automatically when you select acres as your output unit.
What is a hectare and how big is it?
A hectare (ha) is the standard metric unit of land area, equal to 10,000 square meters or about 2.471 acres. It is roughly the size of a square with 100-meter sides, about 1.4 times the size of an American football field including end zones.
How do I find the area of an irregular plot?
Break the irregular plot into simpler shapes such as rectangles, triangles and trapezoids, measure each one, compute the area of each, then add them together. Alternatively, use a GPS app or an online map-drawing tool to trace the boundary and let the software calculate the enclosed area.
What is a square chain and when is it used?
A square chain is the area of a square with sides of one chain (66 feet or 20.12 meters). Ten square chains equal exactly one acre. Square chains appear in older land deeds and surveying records in the US and Commonwealth countries, and are still sometimes referenced in agricultural contexts.