Kanal to Marla

Kanal is the unit of larger land — farm plots, blocks bought for development, and the big residential plots that are too large to describe in marla without the number getting unwieldy. Its definition is refreshingly simple: one kanal is exactly 20 marla, everywhere it is used. That part never varies.

What does vary is how many square feet that comes to, because marla itself varies by region. On the traditional 272.25 square foot marla, a kanal is 5,445 square feet — the familiar figure, equal to 605 square yards. On the 250 square foot marla used by modern housing societies, a kanal is 5,000 square feet. Ten percent less land for the same word.

The relationships worth memorising

South Asian land measurement is built on a chain of round numbers, and knowing the chain makes most conversions doable in your head:

• 1 kanal = 20 marla — fixed, in every region.
• 1 marla = 272.25 ft² = 30.25 yd² — on the traditional standard. 30.25 is 5.5², which is where the odd-looking figure comes from.
• 1 kanal = 5,445 ft² = 605 yd² — because 20 × 272.25 = 5,445 and 605 = 5 × 121.
• 8 kanal = 1 acre — because 8 × 5,445 = 43,560, exactly an acre.
• 1 acre = 160 marla — the same fact from the other direction.
• 4 kanal = 0.5 acre, and 2 kanal = 0.25 acre — the sizes most often traded for development.

Those last few only hold on the traditional standard. Switch to a 250 square foot marla and an acre becomes 8.71 kanal rather than a tidy eight.

When land is priced by the kanal

Small residential plots are priced per marla. Larger parcels — agricultural land, development blocks, and plots of a kanal and above — are often priced per kanal or per acre, and knowing both figures is what lets you compare two listings that quote differently.

The calculator gives you the per-marla and per-kanal values together when you enter a rate for either, so you can put a per-marla plot and a per-kanal block on the same footing. Be careful to check which rate basis a listing uses: a price that looks like a bargain per kanal may simply be quoted on the 250 square foot standard, where a kanal is 10% smaller.

For anything at this scale, also check the actual measurements against the deed. Large parcels are frequently described in round kanal figures that the physical survey does not quite support, and on a multi-kanal purchase a small discrepancy is a large amount of money.

Worked examples

1 kanal. 20 marla. At the traditional standard, 5,445 square feet — 605 square yards, 505.86 square metres, 0.125 acre, or one eighth of an acre.

4 kanal. 80 marla, 21,780 square feet, half an acre, 2,023.4 square metres. A common size for a large house plot or a small development parcel.

10 kanal. 200 marla, 54,450 square feet, 1.25 acres, 5,058.6 square metres. At this scale the acre figure is usually the more useful one, and the calculator shows it alongside.

Half a kanal. 10 marla — the point where the two units meet and the same plot can be described either way. Half a kanal is a standard mid-size residential plot in most cities.

Marla standards and larger parcels

The marla standard matters more, not less, as the parcel gets bigger. On a single 5 marla house plot the difference between standards is about 222 square feet — annoying, but survivable. On 10 kanal it is 4,450 square feet, which is a substantial building's worth of land.

So for anything measured in kanal, insist on the square footage in writing. That is the figure that can be checked against a survey and against the deed, and it is the one a court would look at if a dispute arose. A kanal figure without a stated marla standard is an incomplete description.

Agricultural land has a further complication in some areas, where the local unit is the murabba (25 acres) or the bigha — and bigha in particular has no single definition, varying between roughly 1,600 and 2,700 square yards depending on the region. The calculator does not convert bigha for that reason: a conversion factor that is wrong by 60% is worse than no conversion at all.