ECTS Credits to Hours Calculator

Written byOleh Soloninupdated 25 September 2026

ECTS credits

Hours per credit

An academic year is 60 credits and 1,500–1,800 hours, which puts a credit at 25–30. The ECTS country table lists 25 for Austria, Malta and Slovakia, 26 for Czechia, 27 for Finland, 28 for the Netherlands and Portugal, and 30 for Greece, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine.

Weeks in the semester

Study days a week

Contact hours, %

Advanced options

Length of an academic hour, minutes

An academic hour runs 30–80 minutes; Russian colleges fix it at 45 and universities have set their own since 2014, with a double period built from two of them.

Result

Total hours810
Contact hours324
Self-study hours486
Hours a week45
Hours a study day9
In academic hours1,080
How it was worked out
30 × 27 = 810 clock hours; at 45 minutes an academic hour that is 1080 of them

A credit measures time, not difficulty

Converts credits into study hours, splits them into contact and self-study time, and gives the weekly load.

An ECTS credit does not measure time in a lecture theatre; it measures the whole workload — classes, private study and exam preparation together. A full-time academic year is 60 credits and typically 1,500 to 1,800 hours, which puts one credit at 25 to 30 hours.

What defines a credit, though, is the correspondence to the academic year rather than the hours: countries set different figures. Reported figures differ: Austria, Malta and Slovakia use 25 hours, Czechia 26, Finland 27, the Netherlands and Portugal 28, and Greece, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine 30. In Russia each university sets its own credit unit between 24 and 30 clock hours (clause 16 of the procedure approved by Ministry of Education and Science order No. 245 of 6 April 2021). Take the figure for your own institution from its curriculum. The United Kingdom runs its own: a year is 120 credits, and two of them make one ECTS.

The academic hour is a separate thing again — a teaching period of 30 to 80 minutes used across Russia and much of continental Europe. Because its length varies by institution, it is an input field here rather than a constant.

How to use

Enter the number of credits — 30 for a semester, say.
Set the hours per credit: 25–30 across the EU, or the figure from your own programme specification.
Enter the number of weeks in the term and study days in the week.
Adjust the contact-hour share and the length of an academic hour if you need them.

Credits in hours

Every row is a calculator run at 27 hours a credit, 18 weeks in the term and a contact-hour share of 40 percent.

Calculator runs at 27 hours a credit over 18 weeks.
Credits	Total hours	Contact	Private study	A week	Academic hours at 45 min
5	135	54	81	7.5	180
10	270	108	162	15	360
20	540	216	324	30	720
30	810	324	486	45	1,080
60	1,620	648	972	90	2,160

The academic hour and the double period

An academic hour is a teaching period, usually 30 to 80 minutes long. Russian colleges fix it at 45 minutes and cap teaching at 36 academic hours a week; universities set their length in local regulations and may count clock hours instead. Two consecutive academic hours make what Russian students call a para — a double period, with no statutory definition behind it.

Outside Russia the same idea appears as the academic quarter. In Germany, Sweden and Poland a 60-minute slot is split into a quarter-hour break and a 45-minute class, which is why a timetable reads 9:00 c. t. — cum tempore, meaning the class actually starts at 9:15. An entry marked s. t., sine tempore, starts on the hour. Many universities instead run 90-minute blocks, or periods of 50 or 75 minutes.

None of this changes the credit arithmetic — a credit is a number of clock hours — but it changes how many periods those hours become, which is what a timetable is built from.

What this calculator shows

Total workload in hours and in academic hours
The split between contact time and self-study
The load per week and per study day

What to keep in mind

The default is 27 hours per credit, the middle of the European range.
An academic hour is 45 minutes, so converting from clock hours uses a factor of 60/45.

FAQs

How many hours is one ECTS credit?

Between 25 and 30: a full-time year is 60 credits and 1,500–1,800 hours. The exact figure is national — 25 in Austria, 27 in Finland, 28 in the Netherlands, 30 in Greece, Hungary and Ukraine; in Russia each university picks between 24 and 30 clock hours.

How many hours are 30 ECTS credits?

810 hours at 27 hours a credit, which is 45 hours a week over an eighteen-week term. That is the whole workload, private study included.

How long is an academic hour?

At Russian universities, under the current procedure (Ministry of Education and Science order No. 245 of 6 April 2021, clause 16), 40 or 45 minutes, and a credit may be counted in clock hours instead. Check your own programme's documents; the calculator defaults to 45 minutes.

Why do the hours per credit differ between countries?

Because what defines ECTS is the correspondence to a full academic year, not a number of hours. Sixty credits a year holds everywhere; how many hours that represents is left to national rules.

How do UK credits map onto ECTS?

Two UK credits make one ECTS: a year there is 120 credits of 10 hours, which is the same 60 ECTS of 20 hours. Scotland's SCQF points work the same way.

How much private study does a credit imply?

Whatever is left after contact hours, and you set that share here. At 40 percent of an 810-hour semester it comes to 324 hours taught and 486 on your own.

What is a contact hour?

Time spent in scheduled teaching — lectures, seminars, labs, supervised practicals. Everything else in the credit is your own work, which is why the split is an input rather than a fixed ratio.

Worked example

A 30-credit semester

Input: 30 credits, 27 hours a credit, 18 weeks, 5 study days, 40% contact

Output: 810 hours — 324 contact and 486 private study; 45 hours a week, 9 a day

Note: At a 45-minute academic hour that is 1,080 periods; at 50 minutes, 972.

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ECTS Credits to Hours Calculator

Result

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