How big is an acre?
By Rohit GaurPublished October 8, 2026Last updated October 8, 2026Report a mistake
Drafted with an AI assistant. A separate automated check matched each number to the sources below.
An acre is exactly 43,560 square feet. As a square it is about 208.7 feet (69.6 yards, 63.6 meters) on each side. On an American football field it covers the full width from one goal line to 90.75 yards down the field, and a whole NFL field with its end zones is 1.32 acres. To turn a number of acres into square feet, use the acres to square feet converter.
How big is an acre in feet, yards and meters?
| Unit | One acre is |
|---|---|
| Square feet | 43,560, exactly |
| Square yards | 4,840, exactly |
| Square meters | 4,046.8564224, exactly |
| Hectares | 0.40468564224, exactly |
| Side of a square | 208.71 ft (69.57 yd, 63.61 m) |
| Share of a square mile | 1/640 |
The square-meter and hectare figures are exact because a foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Canada’s Weights and Measures Act defines the acre the same way, as 4,840 square yards. For hectares both ways, see hectares to acres.
Square or strip: what an acre looks like
An acre is exactly ten square chains: a strip a chain wide and a furlong long, 66 by 660 feet, is one acre. It has the same area as a 208.7-foot square, but the square needs 834.8 feet of fence and the strip 1,452 feet.
One acre, two shapes, to scale: a square 208.7 ft on each side, and the chain-by-furlong strip, 66 × 660 ft.
How many football fields is an acre?
A whole NFL field with its end zones is 1.32 acres, so an acre is about three quarters of one. The field is 360 by 160 feet with its end zones, and 300 feet long between the goal lines. An acre is 90.75% of the field between the goal lines, or 75.6% of it with the end zones. Laid across the full 160-foot width, an acre runs 272.25 feet — 90.75 yards — from the goal line.
One acre on an NFL field: the full 160 ft width, from the goal line to the dashed line 272.25 ft (90.75 yd) away.
A Canadian (CFL) field is 65 yards wide, so there an acre runs about 74.5 yards from the goal line. A soccer pitch of FIFA’s recommended 105 by 68 meters is 1.76 acres.
How many courts, rinks and pools fit in an acre?
By area alone, an acre holds about 15½ doubles tennis courts. Courts are rectangles, though, and only 12 whole ones fit inside a square acre: ten upright in two rows of five, and two more turned across the strip left over.
Twelve doubles tennis courts (78 × 36 ft, to the outside of the lines) inside a square acre.
| Playing area | Size | Per acre, by area |
|---|---|---|
| Doubles tennis court | 78 × 36 ft | 15.51 |
| NBA basketball court | 94 × 50 ft | 9.27 |
| Olympic swimming pool | 50 × 25 m | 3.24 |
| NHL ice rink (28 ft rounded corners) | 200 × 85 ft | 2.67 |
How big is half an acre, a quarter acre, 5 acres and 10 acres?
| Acres | Square feet | Side of a square | Fence around it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ¼ acre | 10,890 | 104.4 ft | 417.4 ft |
| ½ acre | 21,780 | 147.6 ft | 590.3 ft |
| 1 acre | 43,560 | 208.7 ft | 834.8 ft |
| 2 acres | 87,120 | 295.2 ft | 1,180.6 ft |
| 5 acres | 217,800 | 466.7 ft | 1,866.8 ft |
| 10 acres | 435,600 | 660.0 ft | 2,640.0 ft |
| 40 acres | 1,742,400 | 1,320.0 ft | 5,280.0 ft |
| 100 acres | 4,356,000 | 2,087.1 ft | 8,348.4 ft |
Half an acre is a square about 147.6 feet on each side, and a quarter acre 104.4 feet. Five acres is a square of about 466.7 feet, and 10 acres exactly 660 feet, one furlong, on each side.
The fence grows more slowly than the area: four times the land needs only twice the fence. Forty acres is a square a quarter of a mile on each side, with exactly a mile of fence around it.
What else is the size of an acre?
An acre is about 20 times the floor area of the median new single-family home completed in the United States in 2025, which was 2,142 square feet. By area it is also about 15½ doubles tennis courts or 9 NBA courts.
How big is a new-home lot?
The median lot of a new single-family house sold in the United States in 2025 was 8,307 square feet, about 0.19 acres. It varied by region:
| Region | Median lot (sq ft) | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Northeast | 11,107 | 0.25 |
| Midwest | 8,752 | 0.20 |
| South | 8,543 | 0.20 |
| West | 5,969 | 0.14 |
How many acres are in a square mile or a section?
In the US public land survey a section is a square mile, 640 acres. A quarter section is 160 acres, and a quarter of that, a quarter-quarter, is 40. A township is six miles square: 36 sections, or 23,040 acres.
A section of 640 acres, its quarter sections of 160 and one set of quarter-quarters of 40. The filled square in the corner is one acre.
Is every acre the same size?
Today, yes. Until the end of 2022 the US acre was defined in survey feet, a foot very slightly longer than the international foot of exactly 0.3048 meters, and an acre measured that way is about 25 square inches larger. Since 1 January 2023 the survey foot should not be used except for historic and legacy work, but older deeds and plats may still use it — a difference that matters on paper, not on the ground.
You may also meet a “commercial acre” or a “builder’s acre”: rounded figures some sellers use that are smaller than 43,560 square feet. Neither appears in NIST Handbook 44 or the 2020 Federal Register notice on the foot, so check the square feet written on the deed.
Measure your own land
To see an acre on your own street, draw a square 208.7 feet on each side on a satellite map with the acreage calculator. It measures the area on the WGS84 ellipsoid, the model of the Earth GPS uses, and gives it in acres, square feet and hectares.