How Many Feet Are in a Meter? Exact and Practical Answers

There are 3.280839895 feet in one meter, commonly rounded to 3.28 feet. In feet and inches, one meter is approximately 3 feet 3.37 inches. To convert any length, multiply meters by 3.280839895; to convert feet back to meters, multiply by exactly 0.3048.

For a rough mental estimate, use 3.3 feet per meter. For plans, records, or calculations, keep more digits internally and round only the final result to a precision supported by the original measurement.

Why the factor is exact at its source

NIST defines the international foot as exactly 0.3048 meter. Therefore, the number of feet in one meter is:

1 ÷ 0.3048 = 3.280839895013123… feet

The decimal continues, so a displayed meter-to-feet value is normally rounded. The underlying relationship is not an empirical estimate: the NIST unit tables state that 1 foot equals 0.3048 meter exactly. The meter itself is the SI base unit of length documented in the current BIPM SI Brochure.

Choose how many digits to keep

Precision should follow the task, not the number of digits your calculator can show.

Displayed answer	Typical use	Rounding
3.3 ft	Mental estimate or conversation	Nearest tenth
3.28 ft	General comparison	Nearest hundredth
3.281 ft	More precise reference	Nearest thousandth
3.28084 ft	Calculation that justifies five decimals	Nearest hundred-thousandth
3 ft 3.37 in	Readable height or object dimension	Inches to the nearest hundredth

A measured length recorded as “1 m” may imply less precision than a calibrated value recorded as “1.0000 m.” Conversion does not create new measurement accuracy. Retain guard digits while calculating, but do not report a long decimal merely because the conversion factor is known precisely.

Convert meters to decimal feet

Use this formula:

feet = meters × 3.280839895013123

For example, convert 2.5 meters:

2.5 × 3.280839895013123 = 8.2020997375 ft
Rounded to two decimals: 8.20 ft

For a quick check, multiply by 3 first. A correct answer must be a little greater than three times the meter value: 2.5 meters should therefore be somewhat above 7.5 feet. If your result is below that, you may have divided when you meant to multiply.

Convert decimal feet to feet and inches

Decimal feet and feet-plus-inches are different notations. To rewrite 3.280839895 feet:

1. Keep the whole number: 3 feet.
2. Keep the decimal remainder: 0.280839895 foot.
3. Multiply the remainder by 12 because one foot contains exactly 12 inches.
4. Round 3.37007874 inches to the precision needed.

Thus, 1 meter is about 3 ft 3.37 in. To round to the nearest common fraction on a tape measure, 0.37 inch is closest to 3/8 inch, so a coarse workshop approximation is 3 ft 3 3/8 in. Use the decimal form when the required tolerance is not tied to a fractional-inch scale.

Common meter-to-feet conversions

Meters	Decimal feet	Approximate feet and inches
0.1 m	0.3281 ft	3.94 in
0.5 m	1.6404 ft	1 ft 7.69 in
1 m	3.2808 ft	3 ft 3.37 in
1.5 m	4.9213 ft	4 ft 11.06 in
2 m	6.5617 ft	6 ft 6.74 in
3 m	9.8425 ft	9 ft 10.11 in
5 m	16.4042 ft	16 ft 4.85 in
10 m	32.8084 ft	32 ft 9.70 in

These values are rounded for display. Recalculate from the full factor when the result will feed another operation rather than copying a rounded table value.

Convert feet back to meters

The reverse calculation is simpler because the international foot has an exact metric value:

meters = feet × 0.3048

For example, 12 feet equals 3.6576 meters exactly before considering the precision of the measured 12-foot input. If the value contains feet and inches, convert the inches to a fraction of a foot first or convert both parts separately:

meters = (feet × 0.3048) + (inches × 0.0254)

One inch equals exactly 0.0254 meter because an international foot contains exactly 12 inches.

Know when the old survey foot matters

For everyday lengths, construction dimensions, travel, sports, and modern datasets, use the international foot described above. The former U.S. survey foot was approximately 0.304800609601 meter, a difference of about two parts per million.

NIST says the U.S. survey foot was retired after December 31, 2022 and should now be avoided except for historical and legacy applications. That distinction can matter across large coordinates in older land-survey or mapping records. When working with such data, read the dataset metadata instead of assuming “ft” identifies which legacy unit was used.

Use one rule and round at the end

Multiply meters by 3.280839895 to get decimal feet. For feet and inches, keep the whole feet and multiply only the decimal remainder by 12. Reverse the direction by multiplying feet by exactly 0.3048.

The final check is precision: use 3.28 feet for a normal answer, 3 ft 3.37 in for a human-readable dimension, and more digits only when the original measurement and the task justify them.