Work & Pay

Hours Between Times Calculator

How long between two times — including shifts that run past midnight — in hours and minutes, and in the decimal form you multiply by.

Enter a start time and an end time.

Start time

End time

Unpaid break

Optional. Comes off the total.

Hourly rate

Optional. Paid on the decimal hours, which is the correct way.

Exact calculation. Given your inputs, this is the answer — no estimation involved.

How this calculator works

Both times are converted to minutes since midnight and subtracted. That handles the ordinary case, and the interesting one is what happens when the end time is earlier than the start.

A shift from 22:00 to 06:00 is eight hours, not minus sixteen. Any calculator that hands you a negative number there has subtracted without asking what the subtraction meant. This treats an earlier end time as the following day — and says so on the result, because that assumption is wrong for someone who typed the times the wrong way round.

The answer is given twice, and the second form is the one that matters. Seven hours and thirty minutes is 7.5 hours, not 7.30. Multiplying 7.30 by an hourly rate underpays by eighteen minutes for every hour worked, and it is the most common payroll arithmetic error there is.

Identical start and end times are refused rather than answered. That could mean no time at all or a full twenty-four hours; both are real, a typo is far more likely, and picking one silently would be wrong half the time.

The formula

Exactly what happens to your numbers, step by step.

The duration
```
minutes = end − start
if end is earlier: minutes = end + 1440 − start
```
1440 is the minutes in a day. This is what turns 22:00 to 06:00 into eight hours.
The two forms
```
clock   = hours and minutes
decimal = total minutes ÷ 60
```
Multiply the decimal by an hourly rate. Never the clock form.

A worked example

A night shift from 22:00 to 06:30 with a 30-minute unpaid break, paid $22 an hour.

What you enter

Start: 22:00
End: 06:30
Unpaid break: 30 minutes
Hourly rate: $22.00

The working

End is earlier, so add a day: 06:30 + 24h = 30:30
Gross duration: 30:30 − 22:00 = 8h 30m
Less the break: 8h 30m − 30m = 8h 00m
As a decimal: 480 ÷ 60 = 8.00 hours
Pay: 8.00 × $22.00 = $176.00

8 hours · $176.00

Had the break been 15 minutes the shift would be 8h 15m — which is 8.25 hours, not 8.15. Paying on 8.15 costs you $2.20 for that one shift, and about $570 a year on five shifts a week.

Assumptions

Every result here rests on these. Change your inputs and the result changes with them.

An end time earlier than the start means the following day.
The break is unpaid and taken entirely within the shift.
Times are on a 24-hour clock, with no time zone or daylight-saving change during the shift.

What this cannot tell you

It cannot know whether your break is actually unpaid. Rules differ by employer and by state, and some short breaks must be paid under federal law.
Overtime is not applied. This is the length of one shift, not a week — the Overtime and Time Card calculators handle weekly totals and premium rates.
A shift spanning a daylight-saving change is genuinely 23 or 25 hours long on the clock, and this does not model that. It happens twice a year, on a Sunday morning.
It assumes one continuous shift. A split shift with a long gap should be entered as two separate calculations.

Questions people ask

How many hours is 9 to 5:30?

Eight and a half hours, or 8.5 in decimal — minus any unpaid break. If you take 30 minutes it is exactly 8 hours. Enter the times above and it does the arithmetic including the break.

How do I calculate an overnight shift?

Add 24 hours to the end time before subtracting. 22:00 to 06:00 becomes 30:00 minus 22:00, which is 8 hours. This does it automatically whenever the end time is earlier than the start, and tells you it made that assumption.

Why is 7 hours 30 minutes not 7.30 hours?

Because minutes are sixtieths, not hundredths. Thirty minutes is half an hour, so it is 7.5. Using 7.30 on a timesheet underpays by 12 minutes of every hour on that shift, and the error compounds across a week.

Should I subtract my lunch break?

If it is unpaid, yes — enter it above and it comes off. Under federal law short breaks of roughly five to twenty minutes are generally paid, while genuine meal breaks of thirty minutes or more usually are not. Your employer or state may be more generous.

What if my start and end times are the same?

This refuses to guess, because it could mean nothing at all or a whole day and both are real. If you genuinely worked twenty-four hours, enter 23:59 as the end time and add a minute.

Sources and review

This calculator uses standard arithmetic with no external rules or published rates, so there is nothing to cite beyond the formulas shown above.

Methodology version 1.0.0 · Last reviewed September 10, 2026