Million to Billion Calculator
These numbers are used so often nowadays that we need to work out their scale carefully. Economies, companies, the super rich, the profits of businesses – all of these are in millions and billions. But how well do you know the difference? The Millions and Billions Calculator will explain and demonstrate how significant the differences between these large numbers can be.
What is a billion?
A billion is now widely recognised as one thousand million. Imagine if 1000 individual millionaires put their cash on a huge table – you would then have 1 billion in cash. It is written as 1,000,000,000.
A million is a huge amount of money, but a billion dwarfs it. Imagine if you earn $200,000 a year – a very good salary. You would earn $1 million in just 5 years. By contrast, it would take you 5000 years to earn a billion! We are in a world here of HUGE differences.
As a fraction, therefore, 1 million = 0.001 billion. So if you are lucky enough to be a millionaire, you are a huge way off being a billionaire!
If you are converting billions to millions, then take the number of billions you are considering and multiply it by 1000 to find the number of millions involved.
For example, a company that has made $2 billion in profit has, by another way of expressing it, earned $2000 million in profit.
A quick bit of history!
If you are reading this in the UK, you may have thought that 1 billion was a million million, not a thousand million. This was in fact the case in the UK years ago, but in the 1970s, after the UK converted to decimalization, they accepted the definition used in the US of a billion as a thousand million and this is now the widely accepted norm. When you see businesses and governments discussing in the billions, think thousands of millions.
Tabling your millions
Here is a Millions to Billions table to explain this in numbers.
1 million = 0.001 billion | 50 million = 0.05 billion |
3 million = 0.003 billion | 52 million = 0.052 billion |
5 million = 0.05 billion | 55 million = 0.055 billion |
10 million = 0.01 billion | 60 million = 0.06 billion |
15 million = 0.015 billion | 80 million = 0.08 billion |
20 million = 0.02 billion | 90 million = 0.09 billion |
30 million = 0.03 billion | 100 million = 0.1 billion |
40 million = 0.04 billion | 330 million = 0.33 billion |
And here is a Billions to Millions table to explain this in numbers.
0.5 billion = 500 million | 17 billion = 17000 million |
0.62 billion = 620 million | 17.35 billion = 17350 million |
0.71 billion = 720 million | 20 billion = 20000 million |
0.825 billion = 825 million | 50 billion = 50000 million |
1 billion = 1000 million | 225 billion = 225000 million |
2.25 billion = 2250 million | 293.5 billion = 293500 million |
2.92 billion = 2292 million | 400 billion = 400000 million |
3 billion = 3000 million | 500 billion = 500000 million |
Time It!
One way to conceptualize the difference between millions and billions is to think of it in terms of time as well as money.
1 million seconds will pass in under 12 days.
1 billion seconds will need 32 years to pass.
1 million minutes will pass in 1.902 years.
1 billion minutes will need 1902 years to pass.
So if you live until 80 years you will enjoy over 42 million minutes.
If you were to live for 42 billion minutes you would need to live for just under 80,000 years!
Use the Millions Billions Calculator to play around and see quite how huge the billion/million differences can be across different ideas of time or distance or money.
And if you think the billions are big numbers, check out how large trillions are!