How Big Is an Acre?
43,560 square feet: about three quarters of an American football field. Watch it drawn to scale below.
Drag to turn. The figure is a 5 ft 9 in person.
1 acre in numbers
- As a square: 208.7 ft by 208.7 ft (63.6 m per side)
- In other units: 43,560 sq ft · 4,046.9 m² · 1.00 acres
- Common layouts: 66 × 660 ft (one chain by one furlong), 132 × 330 ft, 208.7 × 208.7 ft
- Tennis courts (36 × 78 ft doubles): 15.51 by area
- American football fields (160 × 360 ft, end zones included): 0.76 by area
"By area" compares total area. How many actually fit depends on shape, which the drawing above shows.
An acre is 43,560 square feet, or about 4,047 square meters. As a square it is about 208.7 feet on each side.
The odd number comes from history: an acre was the land one ox team could plow in a day, defined as a strip one chain (66 ft) wide and one furlong (660 ft) long. Any shape with 43,560 square feet is still one acre.
By area an acre is about 76% of an American football field with end zones (160 × 360 ft = 57,600 sq ft), or about 91% of the field without them. It holds about fifteen doubles tennis courts by area. Pick “football field” in the compare chips to see it.
Where you see it: large residential lots, small farms and orchards, parking lots for about 100 to 150 cars.