Military Time Converter

How to Read and Convert Military Time

Military time looks confusing the first time you see it on a schedule. 0630. 1445. 2100. No colons, no AM/PM, just four digits. But once you get the pattern, it takes about three seconds to convert in your head.

For anything before 1 PM, the military time basically IS the standard time. 0900 is 9:00 AM. 1130 is 11:30 AM. Just drop the leading zero and add a colon. The only quirk is midnight - that's 0000, which maps to 12:00 AM.

After noon it gets slightly trickier. 1300 is 1:00 PM. 1700 is 5:00 PM. The shortcut: subtract 12 from the first two digits. So 1630 minus 12 gives you 4:30 PM. 2045 minus 12 is 8:45 PM. That's the whole system.

Going the other direction - standard to military - just reverse it. Anything PM (except 12), add 12 to the hour. 3:15 PM becomes 1515. 9:00 PM becomes 2100. For AM times, pad with a zero if needed: 7:00 AM is 0700. And noon stays 1200.

Military Time Reference

Here's every hour in both formats. The left column covers midnight through late morning, the right picks up from noon through the end of the day.

What Time Is It in Military Time?

These are the conversions people look up most. If you've ever stared at a schedule and thought "what is 1700" - here's every afternoon and evening hour broken down.

What time is 1300?

That's 1:00 PM. The afternoon starts at 1300, and from here on every military time is in PM territory. Just subtract 12 from the hour.

What time is 1400?

2:00 PM. You'll see this on shift schedules a lot - second shift at factories and warehouses often kicks off at 1400.

What time is 1500?

3:00 in the afternoon. Call center shift changes, school pickup time, the awkward middle of the workday.

What time is 1600?

4:00 PM. For most office workers this is the home stretch. For retail, it's when the evening crew starts rolling in.

What time is 1700?

5:00 PM - and this is the one people google the most. "Meet me at 1700" just means 5 o'clock. End of the regular workday for most of the country.

What time is 1800?

6:00 PM. Dinner hour. Restaurant evening shifts start here, and it's when most of Europe switches from "afternoon" to "evening" in conversation.

What time is 1900?

7 PM. Hospital nurses know this one well - a lot of 12-hour shifts run 0700 to 1900 or the reverse.

What time is 2000?

8:00 in the evening. You'll see 2000 hours on military base schedules, hotel night audit start times, and late-shift rosters.

What time is 2100?

9 PM. Security guards, overnight hotel staff, and ER techs all start shifts around 2100. It's solidly nighttime.

What time is 2200?

10:00 PM. A lot of retail stores lock their doors at 2200. For third-shift workers, the night is just getting started.

What time is 2300?

11 PM. One hour left in the day. Graveyard shift crews are warming up, and the 2300-0700 block is the one nobody volunteers for.

What time is 0000?

Midnight. The clock resets here. 0000 marks the very start of a new day - if your shift begins at 0000, you're clocking in when everyone else is going to sleep.

Who Actually Uses Military Time?

Obviously, the military. But they're not even the biggest user group. Hospitals run on 24-hour time because a medication scheduled for 8 doesn't leave room for AM/PM confusion when someone's life is involved. Airlines use it globally. So does law enforcement, EMS, fire departments, and pretty much anyone running 24-hour operations.

What surprises people is how common it's gotten in regular business scheduling. Warehouses, call centers, hotels, manufacturing plants - anywhere that runs multiple shifts has at least one manager who's switched to 24-hour format because they got tired of the "wait, was that 8 AM or 8 PM?" conversation.

Most of Europe, Asia, and South America already use 24-hour time in daily life. The 12-hour clock is mainly a US, UK, Canada, and Australia thing. So if you're managing international teams or scheduling across time zones, military time is actually the more universal format.

The Mistakes That Keep Happening

After watching thousands of shift schedules get posted, the same conversion errors come up over and over:

Midnight confusion. Is it 0000 or 2400? Technically both refer to midnight, but 0000 is the start of the day and 2400 is the end. Most systems use 0000. If you write 2400, your scheduling software might throw an error or push the shift to the next day.

The noon trap. People subtract 12 from 1200 and get 0 - then write 0:00 AM. Noon is 1200. Just 1200. No subtraction needed.

Forgetting the leading zero. 0800 is 8:00 AM. 800 means nothing in military time. That zero matters because it tells the reader "this is a four-digit time, not a random number."

Subtracting wrong. 1730 minus 12 is not 5:30 PM... wait, actually it is. But people sometimes subtract 12 from the whole number (1730 - 12 = 1718?) instead of just the hours (17 - 12 = 5, keep the 30). The subtraction only applies to the hour part.

If your team regularly deals with time conversions, an overtime cost breakdown tool can help you catch the scheduling errors that lead to unexpected pay.