Article — Minute Converter
Minute Converter — Convert Minutes to Seconds, Hours, Days
A minute is exactly 60 seconds, 1/60 of an hour, or 1/1440 of a day. The second is the SI base unit of time, defined since 1967 by 9,192,631,770 periods of the cesium-133 atomic transition — so the minute inherits an exact definition. Converting minutes to other time units is pure arithmetic: multiply by 60 for seconds, divide by 60 for hours, divide by 1440 for days.
Minutes are the most-used time unit for human-scale activities. Meetings, cooking, exercise, commutes, video lengths — everything between a few seconds and a few hours gets measured in minutes. The conversions below cover every scale you'll need.
What is a minute?
The minute is 1/60 of an hour. The hour itself is 1/24 of a mean solar day. Together, hours-minutes-seconds form a sexagesimal (base-60) subdivision of the day. The system descends from Babylonian astronomy through Greek and medieval European mathematics, surviving into the modern SI era almost unchanged.
Although the second is now the SI base unit (defined atomically), the minute and hour remain "non-SI units accepted for use with the SI" — meaning international standards explicitly authorize them. Time data in scientific papers, navigation, broadcasting, and everyday life all use minutes routinely.
The 60-base system survives in time because it makes mental arithmetic cleaner — 60 has more divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60) than 100. Splitting an hour into thirds (20 min each) or quarters (15 min) gives whole numbers; splitting a decimal "100-minute hour" wouldn't.
Minutes to seconds
Multiply minutes by 60. So 5 min = 300 s, 30 min = 1800 s, 60 min = 3600 s. Used in video frame counting (a 30-fps video has 1800 frames per minute), audio loop construction, and scientific timing where second resolution matters.
The reverse is divide by 60. A 90-second TV commercial is 1.5 minutes. A 240-second TED talk slot is 4 minutes. Most online platforms display durations in minutes:seconds (mm:ss) format up to about an hour, then switch to hours:minutes:seconds (hh:mm:ss).
Minutes to hours and decimal time
Divide minutes by 60 to get decimal hours. 15 min = 0.25 h, 30 min = 0.5 h, 45 min = 0.75 h, 90 min = 1.5 h. This decimal-hour format is the basis for payroll calculations — a worker who logs 7 h 30 min files 7.5 hours, multiplied by hourly wage for the gross pay.
The reverse is multiply by 60. A 0.6-hour entry is 36 minutes; 0.1 h is 6 minutes; 0.5 h is 30 minutes. Time-tracking software stores entries internally as decimal hours and converts to hh:mm format for display.
Decimal-minute payroll rounding: the FLSA permits rounding worked time to the nearest 6 minutes (0.1 hour) or nearest 15 minutes (0.25 hour). The 6-minute increment must round both directions over time so workers aren't systematically shorted.
Minutes to days, weeks, years
For days, divide minutes by 1440 (= 24 × 60). So 720 min = 0.5 day. For weeks, divide by 10,080 (= 7 × 1440). A 40-hour work week is 2400 min, or 0.238 calendar weeks. The numbers get awkward fast — most people convert to hours first.
For years, the conversion depends on whether you mean a common year (365 days = 525,600 min) or a leap year (366 days = 527,040 min). The mean tropical year is 525,948.77 minutes — the basis for the Gregorian calendar's leap-day correction (one extra day every 4 years, minus 3 days every 400 years).
Everyday minute conversion
Most of life happens at the minute scale. A typical commute is 15–45 minutes. A workout is 30–60 minutes. A movie is 90–180 minutes. A 24-hour day contains 1440 of these units — divide it by quarters (360 minutes each, six hours) and you get the natural blocks of sleep, morning, afternoon, evening.
- 1 minute = 60 seconds = microwave popcorn time
- 5 minutes = 300 seconds = brief presentation
- 15 minutes = 0.25 hour = coffee break
- 30 minutes = 0.5 hour = sitcom (no ads)
- 60 minutes = 1 hour = a TV drama episode
- 90 minutes = 1.5 hours = soccer match length
- 120 minutes = 2 hours = feature film
- 480 minutes = 8 hours = standard workday
- 1440 minutes = 24 hours = one full day
The sexagesimal time system
The 60-based subdivision of time traces back about 4000 years to Babylonian astronomers. They divided the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes (Latin "pars minuta prima" — first small part), each minute into 60 seconds ("pars minuta secunda" — second small part). The names "minute" and "second" come directly from this Latin terminology.
The same sexagesimal structure was applied to angles — 1 degree = 60 minutes of arc = 3600 seconds of arc. That parallel use is why time and angles share unit names. A minute of arc (1/60 degree) is unrelated to a minute of time (60 seconds) despite the shared word.
Minutes in payroll and billing
US labor law (FLSA) permits "rounding" worked time to the nearest 6-minute (1/10 hour) or 15-minute (1/4 hour) increment provided the rounding is unbiased over time. Most timeclock systems use 15-minute rounding with the 7-minute rule: minutes 1–7 round down, 8–14 round up. So an employee clocking in at 8:07 records 8:00; clocking in at 8:08 records 8:15.
Professional services billing (legal, consulting, IT) typically uses 6-minute (0.1 hour) increments. A 14-minute phone call bills as 0.2 hours (12 min, rounded up). The same minute-to-decimal conversion drives every invoice line. Lawyers and accountants log time directly in decimal hours rather than minutes.
Minute conversion tips
The most common error is mixing decimal hours with minutes-out-of-60. A spreadsheet cell holding "7.30" might mean 7 hours 30 minutes (7.5 decimal hours) or 7.30 decimal hours (7 h 18 min). The two interpretations differ by 12 minutes — meaningful for billing. Use clear column headers and label formats.
UTC occasionally inserts a leap second to keep atomic time aligned with Earth's slowing rotation. The 60-second minute is then a 61-second minute on those rare days. The 2017 leap second was at 23:59:60 UTC on 31 December. The IERS has announced that leap seconds will be discontinued by 2035 — UT1-UTC will simply drift instead.