Time Duration Calculator
Calculate the duration between two times in hours and minutes, including overnight shifts.
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Enter a start time and an end time, and this calculator shows the duration in hours and minutes, the total in minutes, and the total in decimal hours. It handles shifts that run past midnight, which makes it practical for timesheets, overtime, billing and checking how long a journey or meeting took.
Reading the three results
- Duration: the gap written as hours and minutes, such as 8h 45m.
- Total minutes: the same gap as a single number, which is easiest to add up across several days.
- Total hours: decimal hours rounded to two places, the form payroll and billing sheets usually want.
The time fields use your browser's time picker, so they may show AM/PM or a 24-hour clock depending on your device settings; the calculation is the same either way.
Two worked examples
A day shift
09:30 to 18:15 is 18 × 60 + 15 = 1,095 minutes minus 9 × 60 + 30 = 570 minutes, giving 525 minutes. That displays as 8h 45m and 8.75 hours.
A night shift
22:00 to 06:30 would be negative on the same day, so the calculator adds 24 hours (1,440 minutes): 390 − 1,320 + 1,440 = 510 minutes, or 8h 30m and 8.5 hours. A note under the result, "End time assumed to be the next day", confirms the overnight assumption.
Decimal hours without the common mistake
Minutes must be divided by 60, not written after a decimal point. 8h 45m is 8.75 hours, not 8.45. At ₹250 an hour, the difference is real: 8.75 × 250 = ₹2,187.50, while 8.45 × 250 = ₹2,112.50, underpaying by ₹75 for a single shift. Handy conversions:
| Minutes | Decimal hours |
|---|---|
| 15 | 0.25 |
| 20 | 0.33 |
| 30 | 0.5 |
| 40 | 0.67 |
| 45 | 0.75 |
Breaks, weekly totals and long shifts
- Unpaid breaks: the calculator measures one continuous span. Subtract breaks from the total minutes yourself: 525 minutes minus a 45-minute lunch leaves 480 minutes, exactly 8 hours.
- Weekly totals: add the Total minutes for each day, then divide by 60 once at the end. Adding rounded decimal hours day by day can drift by a few hundredths.
- Split shifts: run each segment separately and add the minutes.
- Identical times: entering the same start and end gives 0h 0m, not 24 hours. The longest span it can show is 23h 59m, so use a date-based tool for anything longer.
What it does not account for
Only hours and minutes are used; seconds are ignored. The calculator also does not know about daylight saving time, which India does not use. In countries that do, a night shift on the night the clocks change is really one hour longer or shorter than shown. To convert the result into other units, such as minutes to seconds or hours to days, use the Time Converter, and to turn an annual salary into an hourly rate to multiply by your hours, the Salary to Hourly Calculator helps.