Weight Converter

A weight converter changes kilograms into pounds, stone, ounces or grams and back again — 1 kg is 2.20462 pounds, and 1 pound is exactly 0.45359237 kg. As with length, that pound figure is a definition rather than a measurement: the same 1959 agreement that fixed the inch also fixed the pound in terms of the kilogram, so conversions between metric and imperial weight are exact. This is the page for reading a recipe written in another country's units, for making sense of a doctor's note in stone when your scale reads kg, or for converting a shipping weight. It runs entirely in your browser.

How to use it

1. Pick the unit you have and the unit you want.
2. Type the amount — the result appears as you type.
3. Everything converts through kilograms internally, so grams to stone is as exact as grams to kilograms.
4. Stone is included because it is still the everyday unit for body weight in Britain and Ireland, and almost nowhere else.

Examples

• 1 kilogram = 2.20462 pounds.
• 1 pound = 0.45359237 kg, exactly.
• 70 kg = 154.324 pounds = 11.0231 stone.
• 1 stone = 14 pounds = 6.35029 kg.

Frequently asked questions

How many pounds are in a kilogram?

2.20462 pounds, and going the other way 1 pound is 0.45359237 kilograms exactly. The quick mental version is to double the kilograms and add ten percent: 70 kg becomes 140 plus 14, which is 154 — and the exact answer is 154.324, so the shortcut is good to within a third of a pound. That is fine for a suitcase and not fine for a recipe or a medicine dose, where the difference compounds.

How do I convert kilograms to stone?

There are 14 pounds in a stone, so one stone is 6.35029 kg. To go from kilograms, convert to pounds first and then divide by 14 — 70 kg is 154.324 pounds, which is 11.0231 stone, usually spoken as 11 stone 0.3 pounds. Stone is almost entirely a British and Irish unit for body weight; it is not used in the United States, where the same weight would simply be given as 154 pounds. If a form asks for stone and pounds separately, take the whole number of stone first and convert whatever is left over.

How many ounces are in a pound?

Sixteen, for the ordinary avoirdupois ounce used for food and body weight. There is another ounce — the troy ounce, used for precious metals — which is heavier, at about 31.1 grams against 28.35, and there are only twelve of them in a troy pound. That is why a pound of gold and a pound of flour are genuinely different weights. This converter uses the everyday avoirdupois ounce throughout, which is the one on any kitchen scale or food label.

Is weight the same thing as mass?

Strictly, no, and the page is named for the word people actually search for. Mass is how much matter there is, measured in kilograms; weight is the force gravity exerts on that mass, properly measured in newtons. On the Moon your mass is unchanged and your weight is about a sixth. In everyday use on Earth the distinction never bites, because gravity is near enough constant, which is why scales are marked in kilograms and nobody objects. Everything on this page is really a mass conversion, and the answers are the ones you want.

Why does my bathroom scale disagree with this?

Because the conversion is exact and the scale is not. Domestic bathroom scales are typically accurate to within a few hundred grams at best, and many round to the nearest 100 g or 0.2 lb before they display anything. Add real variation through the day — food, drink and hydration easily move body weight by one to two kilograms — and two readings taken hours apart can differ more than any conversion error. If the scale shows kilograms and pounds and the two disagree slightly, that is the scale rounding twice, not arithmetic.