How many acres are in a hectare?
A hectare is 2.471 acres — 2.4710538 to seven decimal places. The exact figure runs the other way: an acre is 0.40468564224 hectares, exactly, because an acre is 43,560 square feet and a foot is 0.3048 metres. So to turn hectares into acres, divide by 0.40468564224; to turn acres into hectares, multiply by it. Half a hectare is 1.236 acres, and 10 hectares are 24.71 acres.
A hectare is also 10,000 square metres, or 107,639 square feet.
How big is a hectare?
As a square, a hectare is 100 metres on each side, about 328 feet. That is room for eight Olympic swimming pools, each 50 by 25 metres, laid two across and four deep. An acre fits inside it as a square 63.6 metres on each side; for an acre drawn on a football field and beside tennis courts, see how big is an acre.
A hectare to scale: eight Olympic pools of 50 × 25 m fill it exactly. The dashed square is an acre, 63.6 m on each side.
- Football (soccer): FIFA recommends a field of play 105 by 68 metres, which is 0.714 hectares, so a hectare is 1.4 of them. The Laws of the Game allow an international pitch 100 to 110 metres long and 64 to 75 metres wide: 0.64 to 0.825 hectares.
- Tennis: about 38 doubles courts of 23.77 by 10.97 metres, measured to the outside of the lines, without the space around them.
- American football: 1.87 fields, end zones included, at 360 by 160 feet each.
What is a hectare? Is it an SI unit?
No. The hectare is a historical name for the square hectometre — 1 ha = 1 hm² = 10,000 m² — which the International Committee for Weights and Measures adopted in 1879 for land area. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures lists it in Table 8, “Non-SI units”, of its SI Brochure (9th edition, version 4.01, June 2026). Versions up to August 2025 titled that table “Non-SI units accepted for use with the SI units”.