Degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius Converter

How many degrees Celsius are in a degree Fahrenheit?

Temperature is the one conversion on this site that is not a simple multiplication. degree Fahrenheit and degree Celsius have different zero points as well as different degree sizes, so you must apply an offset as well as a scale factor. The formula is °C = (°F − 32) × 5/9.

This is why "twice as many degrees" never means "twice as hot", and why you cannot convert a temperature difference the same way you convert a temperature. A rise of 10 °C is a rise of 18 °F, not 50 °F.

The reference table under the converter lists the values people look up most often, so for a common figure you can read the answer off directly rather than typing anything.

Worked examples

Three worked examples, using °C = (°F − 32) × 5/9:

32 °F converts to 0 °C. 72 °F converts to 22.22 °C. 98.6 °F converts to 37 °C.

Notice that the gaps between the converted values are not proportional to the gaps between the originals in the way they would be for a simple multiplication — that is the offset at work, and it is why temperature needs its own formula rather than a factor.

Doing this conversion in your head

The exact formula is (°F − 32) × 5/9. In your head, subtract 30 and halve: 70 °F → 20 °C against a true 21 °C, and 90 °F → 30 °C against a true 32 °C. It reads a degree or two low at the warm end.

Two anchors make the rest easy to place: 32 °F is freezing, and −40 is the same number on both scales. If you can remember those and the halving trick, you can navigate any weather forecast.

When you need to convert degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius

The two units meet in a fairly predictable set of situations, and which one you are in tells you how much precision you actually need.

On the source side, Fahrenheit is the weather forecast, oven dial and thermostat setting in the United States. On the target side, Celsius is the weather forecast, oven settings and body temperature across most of the world. The conversion is essentially a translation between those two worlds — most often because a figure produced in one context has to be understood, submitted or acted on in the other.

Precision matters unevenly here. An oven is forgiving to within about five degrees; a medical threshold or a materials specification is not.

All of it happens in the page. There is no upload, no queue and no record of what you converted once the tab is closed.

What a degree Fahrenheit and a degree Celsius actually are

The degree Fahrenheit (°F). Daniel Fahrenheit's 1724 scale, now used officially only in the United States and a few territories.

The degree Celsius (°C). Named for Anders Celsius; zero and 100 are the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level.

Since degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius both quantify temperature against a common defined standard, nothing is lost in translating between them. The only imprecision anywhere in this page is deliberate rounding for readability.

Common mistakes when converting degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius

The classic error is converting a difference as though it were a value. Adding the 32 offset is correct for a temperature; it is wrong for a change in temperature. If a forecast says it will be 10 °C warmer tomorrow, that is 18 °F warmer, not 50 °F warmer.

A second trap is kelvin notation: it is written "300 K", never "300 °K" and never "degrees kelvin". Kelvin is an absolute scale with no degree symbol, and it never goes negative — −273.15 °C is absolute zero, the floor of the scale.

For a batch of figures, set the units once and work down the list rather than converting via a third unit — each intermediate step introduces its own rounding.