Use our hours from now calculator to determine the exact time and date a specific number of hours from the current moment.

← 1 hour from now3 hours from now →

On this page

How to Add Hours

Whether you’re scheduling meetings, setting reminders, or planning events, you may often need to figure out what time it will be a certain number of hours from now. To do this accurately, it helps to understand a few basics about how time works:

  • There are 60 minutes in an hour, if you’re adding minutes as well, use a minutes to hours converter.
  • A day is divided into two 12-hour segments, the first half is AM and the second half is PM.
  • In the 24-hour clock system, hours are numbered from 00 to 23, commonly known as military time.

Once you know these fundamentals, you can easily calculate a future time by following these steps.

Step One: Determine the Starting Time

Begin by identifying your starting point, this could be the current time or any specific time in the future.

For example, let’s say your starting time is 3:00 PM.

Step Two: Add Hours to the Starting Time

Next, add the desired number of hours to your starting time.

Using the example above:

3:00 PM + 2 hours = 5:00 PM

You can use the same method if you’re adding minutes, just make sure to adjust if the minutes exceed 60.

Special Considerations

Crossing from AM to PM (or vice versa):

When adding hours takes you past noon or midnight, remember to switch the time period.

For instance, adding 2 hours to 11:00 AM results in 1:00 PM in 12-hour time (or 13:00 in 24-hour time).

You can use our 24-hour to 12-hour time converter to easily switch between formats.

Crossing into the next day:

If your calculation extends beyond midnight, the resulting time will fall on the following day.

For example:

11:00 PM + 2 hours = 1:00 AM (next day)