Military Time Converter

Military time is the 24-hour clock written as four digits, with no colon: 0000 through 2359 instead of 12:00 AM through 11:59 PM. The conversion comes down to one rule — for the morning hours you barely change anything, and for the afternoon and evening hours you subtract 12.

0000 to 1159 (midnight through 11:59 AM) convert directly: drop the leading zero, add a colon before the last two digits, and label it AM. 0000 is the one exception — it becomes 12:00 AM, not 0:00 AM. For example, 0800 becomes 8:00 AM and 1145 becomes 11:45 AM.

1200 to 1259 (the noon hour) stays as 12, labeled PM. 1200 is 12:00 PM and 1230 is 12:30 PM — no subtraction needed.

1300 to 2359 (1 PM through 11:59 PM) need 12 subtracted from the hour, then labeled PM. 1730 minus 12 hours is 5, so 1730 becomes 5:30 PM. 2359 minus 12 hours is 11, so 2359 becomes 11:59 PM.

Hour 13–23 → subtract 12, add PM
Hour 00 → 12 AM (midnight)
Hour 12 → 12 PM (noon)
Hour 01–11 → keep as-is, add AM

Military time isn't just written differently — it's spoken differently too. When the minutes are exactly on the hour (:00), you say the hour digits followed by the word "hundred." So 0800 is spoken as "zero eight hundred," and 1700 is "seventeen hundred." Midnight (0000) is usually just "zero hundred."

When there are minutes past the hour, you say the hour digits and the minute digits as two separate numbers, with no "hundred." 1730 is spoken as "seventeen thirty," and 0815 is "zero eight fifteen." Hours under 10 keep the leading "zero" when spoken — 0530 is "zero five thirty," not just "five thirty." The word "hours" is often tacked on at the end in formal or military settings, as in "seventeen thirty hours."

Military time and the 24-hour clock use the same underlying hours (0 through 23), but military time adds a few strict formatting rules that the everyday 24-hour clock doesn't always enforce. Military time drops the colon entirely — 1730, not 17:30. It also always uses four digits, so early morning hours keep their leading zero: 0800, never just 800. A plain 24-hour clock, by contrast, is often written with a colon and without the leading zero, like 8:00 or 17:30.

One common point of confusion is 2400 vs. 0000. Both refer to the exact same instant — the boundary between one day and the next — but they're used in different contexts. 0000 marks the very start of a new day and is what hospitals, the military, and most scheduling systems use. 2400 is occasionally used to mark the very end of the current day, mostly on transportation and event timetables, but it's considered non-standard because it can be misread as belonging to the wrong day. When in doubt, use 0000 for midnight.

Every hour of the day, in both formats. Minutes carry over exactly as written — for example, 17:45 standard time is 1745 military time.