Hours Between Times Calculator

Enter a start time and an end time. The calculator converts both to minutes past midnight, subtracts the start from the end, and returns the gap as decimal hours, whole hours plus minutes, and total minutes. With auto-detect on, an end time earlier than the start (for example 22:00 to 06:00) is treated as next-day, so you get 8 hours instead of a negative result.

Yes. Switch the format to 12-hour and enter values like 9:00 AM or 5:30 PM. Lowercase am/pm and forms with periods such as 9:15 a.m. are accepted too. 12:00 AM is parsed as midnight (00:00 in 24-hour), and 12:00 PM is parsed as noon (12:00). The result echoes both times back in normalized 24-hour HH:MM for clarity.

Auto-detect treats any end time earlier than the start as crossing midnight, so 23:45 to 00:15 returns 30 minutes, not a negative. If you turn auto-detect off, you can force the behavior either way: tick the overnight box to add a full 24 hours, or leave it off to require end >= start (the calculator returns no result if the times do not fit).

The calculator flags a shift above 8 hours as a scheduling cue. That flag does not determine legal overtime. Federal overtime generally applies after 40 hours in a workweek for covered nonexempt employees, while daily thresholds depend on state law, industry, exemptions, contracts, and approved work schedules.

Decimal hours express the gap as one number that is easy to multiply against an hourly rate. 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5 decimal hours because 30 minutes is half an hour (30 / 60 = 0.5). Hours and minutes is how clocks and calendars show time, so it is friendlier for reading and planning. The calculator returns both, plus total minutes if you need the raw integer.