Knots to km/h

One knot is 1.852 km/h, and this shows the working rather than just the answer. Nothing you type here leaves your browser — it is worked out on your own device, so there is nothing to send and nothing to log.

The factor

One knot is 1.852 km/h. That is the whole of the conversion: multiply by it, and nothing else happens.

What this page will not claim

It will not call this conversion exact. The factor is right to every figure shown, but at least one of these two units is not defined exactly in terms of the other, so there is a limit to how far the decimals mean anything.

The knot is one nautical mile per hour, so exactly 1.852 km/h.

The number in your head

Most people use 1.9 for this, which is the factor to two significant figures. It is high by 2.5918% — 25.918 km/h too many in every thousand, and 259.18 in every ten thousand.

Going the other way

The reverse is not this sum backwards in your head. It is a different factor, 0.539956803456, and dividing by one is not the same as multiplying by a rounded version of the other.

Rounded, the way back is 0.54, which is high by 0.008%. So the two roundings do not cancel: go out and back with both and you do not land where you started.

How many of those decimals mean anything

The box above will give you ten decimal places because it can. Whether they mean anything is decided by your measurement, not by the arithmetic.

If you measured to the nearest knot, your figure is already uncertain by half of one — so the answer is uncertain by about 0.926 km/h, and every digit past that is decoration. Quoting 2.28640512 when you measured with a tape is claiming a precision the tape never had.

Where these two sit

Knots and km/h both measure speed, which is why they can be converted at all. A conversion between families — a length into a weight — is not a conversion, it is a question with a missing quantity in it.

Other conversions from knots

mph · m/s · ft/s

Where to go next