Kilograms to pounds
One kilogram is 2.2046226 pounds. Multiply kilograms by 2.20462 to get pounds, and divide by the same figure to come back. Nothing about that number is measured or provisional: the international pound has been defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms since 1959, so every digit after the decimal point is arithmetic rather than observation.
How to convert kg to lbs
The number to use, and the number people use instead
Two point two is the figure almost everyone carries in their head, and it is short by roughly a fifth of a per cent. That sounds like nothing and behaves like nothing until a threshold is involved. A 100 kg pallet converts to 220 lb with the rough factor and 220.46 lb with the real one. Half a pound is invisible on a scale and decisive on a form that reads up to 220 lb. The same gap on a tonne is 4.6 lb, and on a 20-tonne container it is 92.
Where the rough factor never causes trouble is the gym, the kitchen and the bathroom scale, because all three round to the nearest pound anyway.
Mass, weight, and why nobody minds
Strictly, the kilogram measures mass while the pound gets used for both mass and force, and a physicist would say converting one to the other needs gravity in the middle. In practice the distinction dissolves. Every scale you will meet is calibrated for Earth’s surface and reports the same underlying quantity in whichever unit its market expects. The conversion above is between the kilogram and the pound-mass, which is what a luggage scale, a butcher’s counter and a courier’s manifest all mean by the word.
What changed in 2019, and what did not
The kilogram used to be a cylinder of platinum-iridium in a vault outside Paris, and every other mass in the world was defined by comparison with it. Since May 2019 it has been fixed through the Planck constant instead, at exactly 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ joule seconds. Because the pound is defined as a fraction of the kilogram, that redefinition quietly redefined the pound too. Neither unit moved by an amount any scale could detect. What changed is that the definition no longer rests on an object that could be scratched, contaminated or dropped.
What people use it for
- Checking a 23 kg airline allowance against a 50 lb one
- Reading a metric bathroom scale onto a form printed in pounds
- Quoting a parcel weight to a courier that bills by the pound
- Loading an American training programme onto a metric barbell
- Putting a metric product weight on packaging for the US market
- Turning a metric tonne into short tons for a freight quote
Questions
No. One kilogram is 2.20462262 pounds, because a pound is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms. Using 2.2 runs about 0.21 per cent low, which is 0.46 lb on every 100 kg — near enough half a pound.
Double the kilograms and add ten per cent. Eighty becomes 160 plus 16, so 176, against a true 176.37. It runs a shade low and the error grows in proportion, so it is fine for a suitcase and not for a shipping bracket.
The international yard and pound agreement of 1959, signed by the national standards laboratories of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It is a definition, so it carries no error bar.
A stone is 14 pounds, so 6.35029318 kg. Ten stone is 63.5 kg.
Multiply by 2.20462 for pounds, divide that by 14 for the whole stones, and the remainder is the pounds. Seventy kilograms is 154.32 lb, which is 11 stone 0.3 lb.
No, and there are three of them. A metric tonne is 1,000 kg, or 2,204.62 lb. A US short ton is 2,000 lb, or 907.18 kg. A UK long ton is 2,240 lb, or 1,016.05 kg. Three different quantities sharing one syllable.
No. The troy pound is 373.24 g and the troy ounce 31.1035 g, and they are used for precious metals only. A price quoted per ounce of gold is a troy ounce, not the 28.35 g ounce this page converts.
Consumer scales round, usually to 0.1 kg or 0.2 lb, and some display half-pound steps. The conversion itself is exact; the reading is not.
Not for anything you will use this for. Mass is the same everywhere. A spring scale does read about half a per cent differently between the equator and the poles, which is well below the resolution of any household scale.
Yes. Both are the international avoirdupois pound, and have been since 1959. Historical and troy pounds differ and are not used for body or shipping weight.
Yes, in this browser only. The swap direction is kept in local storage and nothing about it is sent anywhere.