Last updated October 12, 2026 · Report an error
Working out the elapsed time between two clock times is simple until it crosses midnight — this calculator handles that automatically.
Enter a start and end time to find the duration in hours and minutes, whether or not it spans overnight.
How it works
Enter a start time and an end time. The calculator finds the elapsed time between them — if the end time is earlier in the day than the start time, it automatically assumes the span crosses midnight into the next day.
- Enter start time.
- Enter end time.
- Click Calculate to see your results.
Examples
A workday
From 9:00 to 17:30 is 8 hours 30 minutes.
An overnight shift
From 22:00 to 02:00 is 4 hours, automatically accounting for crossing midnight.
Who should use it
- Calculating hours worked for a shift, including overnight shifts.
- Finding the duration of an event given its start and end times.
Industry applications
- Payroll and time tracking
- Scheduling and shift planning
Advantages
- Automatically detects and handles overnight (midnight-crossing) spans.
- Shows the total in both hours-and-minutes and total-minutes formats.
Limitations
- Limited to a single day-to-next-day span — doesn't handle multi-day time ranges.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Manually subtracting times without accounting for a crossing of midnight, which produces a negative or incorrect result.
- Forgetting that 60 minutes carries over into an additional hour when adding up elapsed time by hand.
Best practices
- When logging work hours or shifts, always double-check overnight spans specifically, since they're the most common source of manual calculation errors.
Tips
- For calculating pay, remember that total minutes divided by 60 gives a cleaner decimal-hours figure than manually converting hours and minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, with no signup and no limit on how many calculations you run.
If the end time is earlier in the day than the start time, the calculator assumes the span continues into the next day rather than being a negative duration.
This calculator handles durations within a single overnight span (up to 24 hours). For multi-day durations, use a date calculator instead.
No — it assumes both times are in the same time zone. For cross-time-zone calculations, convert both times to the same zone first.