CBM Calculator (Meters)
Enter your box dimensions in meters to get the CBM (cubic meters) and cubic feet of your carton.
CBM from meters
This is CBM in its purest form: CBM is cubic meters, so when your box is already measured in meters there is nothing to convert. Multiply the three sides and the result is the answer, which makes meters the natural unit for large crates, machinery and bulky cargo.
How it works
Multiply length, width and height directly in meters:
CBM = L × W × H (all in meters)
No divisor is needed, because the cubic meter is the unit itself. To present the same volume in imperial, multiply by 35.3147 to get cubic feet.
Worked example
Using the page defaults, a carton 1 × 0.8 × 0.6 m:
- CBM:
1 × 0.8 × 0.6 = 0.48 CBM - Cubic feet:
0.48 × 35.3147 = 16.951 ft³
So one carton is 0.48 CBM. Fifty of them total 24 CBM, which is a useful figure to keep handy because a 20 ft container holds on the order of 25-28 CBM of usable space. Measure to the outside of the crate at its widest and keep two or three decimal places, small boxes in meters produce small decimals that are easy to truncate by accident.
Meter-to-CBM reference
| Box (m) | CBM | Cubic ft |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 × 0.5 × 0.5 | 0.125 | 4.414 |
| 1 × 0.8 × 0.6 | 0.480 | 16.951 |
| 1.2 × 1.0 × 1.0 | 1.200 | 42.378 |
| 2 × 1.5 × 1.2 | 3.600 | 127.133 |
If your measurements are in smaller metric units, the CBM calculator in cm and CBM calculator in mm handle the decimal shift for you. For imperial inputs, see the CBM calculator in feet. Once you have a total CBM and want to know how it fits a container, try the main CBM calculator.