Area Converter turns one land measurement into another: bigha, acre, hectare, guntha, kanal, cent, marla, square metres and the rest, in both directions.
It exists because land in India is bought, rented, taxed and argued over in units that do not agree with each other, and the one a farmer grew up with is almost never the one a bank form, a subsidy scheme or an agronomy recommendation asks for.
The most important thing it does is warn you about the bigha. A bigha is not one size — it differs by state and sometimes by district, and the difference is not small. Converting the wrong bigha is how a farmer under-orders seed for a season or signs a rent agreement for land he thinks is a third larger than it is. The tool says which bigha it is using rather than quietly picking one.
It is built for the moment somebody is filling in a form with a queue behind them: type the number in the unit you know, read it in the unit being asked for, copy it across.
It works entirely on the device, needs no account and no internet, and is free. A unit conversion is not something anybody should have to sign up for.
How to use Area Calculator
What it is. A converter between the fourteen units land is actually measured in — acre, hectare, square metre, square foot, square yard, square kilometre, square inch, are, and the Indian units cent, decimal, guntha, bigha, kanal and marla.
When to open it. Any time two people are describing the same piece of land in different words: a lease written in bigha, a government scheme that pays per hectare, a buyer quoting per square foot, a yield figure published per acre.
Have ready.
The number, and the unit it is already in.
For bigha, the state the land is in — see the warning below, because this one genuinely matters.
Step by step.
Type the figure into the box marked 'How much land?'.
Set 'From' to the unit you have. Acre, Hectare, Square Metre, Square Foot, Bigha, Kanal and Guntha sit at the top of the list because they are the ones actually picked.
Set the second unit to what you need it in, or press 'Convert to All Units' to see every one at once — which is usually what you want, because the argument is rarely about only two units.
The swap button between the two reverses the direction without retyping the number.
What it will not do. It converts units; it does not measure land, and it cannot tell you which state's bigha somebody meant. For bigha in particular the figure is approximate by nature and the screen labels it that way.
Every setting in Area Calculator, explained
How much land?
The quantity being converted. How to choose: Decimals are fine — 2.5 acre is a real answer and rounding it to 2 before converting throws away a fifth of an acre. If it is wrong: Nothing else on the screen can correct a mistyped figure, and the output is confident either way.
From
The unit the number is currently in. How to choose: Whatever the document, the lease or the neighbour actually said. This is the one thing on the screen you should not guess. If it is wrong: Every unit below is wrong by the ratio between the two, which for acre against hectare is a factor of about 2.47 — big enough to change what a scheme pays.
To
The unit you want the answer in. How to choose: Hectare for anything government or scientific, acre for most trade, square foot for anything being sold as a plot. If it is wrong: Nothing is lost — press 'Convert to All Units' and read the right row.
A worked example
A lease says the plot is 3 bigha. The subsidy is published per hectare, and a buyer has offered a price per square foot.
What goes in:
3
From: Bigha
Convert to All Units
What comes out:
About 0.75 hectare, using the app's approximate bigha of 2,508 square metres.
About 1.86 acre.
About 81,000 square feet.
About 74.4 guntha, if the argument happens to be in Maharashtra.
In West Bengal, where a bigha is closer to 1,340 square metres, those same 3 bigha are about 0.40 hectare — barely half. That is not a rounding difference. It is why the bigha row carries a warning on the screen itself.
How to read what it gives you
Acre and hectare are exact: an acre is 4,046.8564224 square metres and a hectare is exactly 10,000, both fixed by international agreement.
Cent and decimal are the same size — 40.47 square metres, a hundredth of an acre. They differ only in which part of India uses the word: cent in the south, decimal in the east.
Guntha, kanal and marla are fixed by land-revenue law, so those conversions are exact too. A guntha is 121 square yards, a kanal is 20 marla, and a marla is 30.25 square yards.
Bigha is the exception and the app says so. It has no national standard and legitimately runs from about 1,340 square metres in West Bengal to about 3,025 in parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The figure used here, 2,508 square metres, is one common value, not the value.
What usually goes wrong
Converting a bigha figure without knowing which state's bigha it is. This is the single most common way to be confidently wrong about land, and it is wrong by more than a factor of two between the extremes.
Treating a converted area as a measured area. Converting 3 bigha tells you what 3 bigha is; it does not tell you whether the plot is really 3 bigha. For that, measure it — Field Geometry walks the boundary.
Using the output in a legal document. A revenue record is authoritative and this is arithmetic. Where the two disagree, the record wins.
Questions people ask about Area Calculator
How many square feet are in 1 bigha?
Using this app's approximate value of 2,508 square metres, about 27,000 square feet. But bigha is not standardised: in West Bengal it is nearer 14,400 square feet and in parts of Rajasthan nearer 32,600. Always establish which bigha before relying on the number.
How many bigha are in an acre?
About 1.61, at the approximate value used here. In West Bengal it is nearer 3, and in parts of Rajasthan nearer 1.34. The honest answer is that the question has no single answer without naming the state.
Is 1 cent the same as 1 decimal?
Yes. Both are 40.47 square metres, one hundredth of an acre. Cent is the usual word in South India and decimal in East India, but they are the same area.
How many acres are in a hectare?
2.4711. Both units are exactly defined, so this conversion is exact rather than approximate — a hectare is 10,000 square metres and an acre is 4,046.8564224.
How many marla are in a kanal?
Twenty. A kanal is 505.86 square metres and a marla is 25.29, and both are fixed by land-revenue law in Punjab, Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir, so this conversion is exact.
Does the Area Calculator need an account?
Yes. Opening it inside the app needs a signed-in account, like almost everything in Laisha — the exceptions are the stack calculator, the vehicle register and Laisha FM, which open to anyone. What is free without any account at all is this page and the conversion tables on it: the exact factors are here, and a bigha figure read here is the same figure the app would give you.
Want to use Area Calculator for real, right now? Open Area Calculator in the Laisha app → Ten days free, no card. After that 10 US dollars a month, one price worldwide.