How the meters to feet conversion works
Meters and feet measure the same thing, length, on two different scales, and since 1959 the two have been tied together by an exact international agreement rather than a measured ratio. One foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Flip that around and 1 meter is exactly 3.28083990 ft. Every number on this page, the decimal feet, the feet and inches, the chart, traces back to that single defined value, so the only rounding involved is in how many decimal places we choose to display.
The formula
Here meters is the SI length you are converting from, and feet is the international foot used throughout the US for everything from room dimensions to human height. Divide by 0.3048 for the exact figure, or multiply by 3.28083990, the same number inverted.
Worked example
2 m to ft: 2 ÷ 0.3048 = 6.56 ft. Split that into whole feet and inches: 6 ft, then 0.56 ft × 12 = 6.7 in, so 2 m is 6 ft 6.7 in.
Reverse check: 6.56 ft × 0.3048 = 2.00 m, confirming the round trip.
Common mix-up: feet and inches are not decimal feet
The most common mistake with this conversion is treating "6.7 inches" as if it were "0.7 feet." It isn't: 0.7 of a foot is 8.4 inches (0.7 × 12), not 7 inches. This trips people up when they eyeball a decimal-feet result and try to read the inches off the digits after the decimal point directly. Always run the fractional feet through × 12 to get real inches, which is exactly what the calculator above and the chart below already do for you.
Chart: meters to feet from 1 to 100 m
| Meters | Feet (decimal) | Feet and inches |
|---|---|---|
| 1 m | 3.28 ft | 3 ft 3.4 in |
| 2 m | 6.56 ft | 6 ft 6.7 in |
| 3 m | 9.84 ft | 9 ft 10.1 in |
| 5 m | 16.40 ft | 16 ft 4.9 in |
| 10 m | 32.81 ft | 32 ft 9.7 in |
| 20 m | 65.62 ft | 65 ft 7.4 in |
| 30 m | 98.43 ft | 98 ft 5.1 in |
| 40 m | 131.23 ft | 131 ft 2.8 in |
| 50 m | 164.04 ft | 164 ft 0.5 in |
| 60 m | 196.85 ft | 196 ft 10.2 in |
| 70 m | 229.66 ft | 229 ft 7.9 in |
| 80 m | 262.47 ft | 262 ft 5.6 in |
| 90 m | 295.28 ft | 295 ft 3.3 in |
| 100 m | 328.08 ft | 328 ft 1.0 in |
Where this shows up: height and beyond
The single most common reason someone needs meters to feet is a person's height listed the metric way. Our height converter is built specifically for that, with feet-and-inches as the default output and centimeters alongside meters. For smaller lengths measured in millimeters or centimeters, like a screen size, a part dimension, or a craft project, see the matching mm to inches and cm to inches converters, built on the same exact 0.3048-derived factor. And if the number in front of you is a weight instead of a length, the kg to lbs and lbs to kg converters use the same one-formula, both-directions approach.