Convert marla to square feet — and pick which marla standard the conversion uses.
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Marla is the unit most residential land in Pakistan is bought and sold in, and it is the one unit here that has no single fixed size. The traditional marla is 272.25 square feet, which makes a kanal exactly 5,445 square feet and an acre exactly 160 marla. But newer housing societies often sell on a 250 square foot marla, and older schemes in some regions use 225.
That matters because the difference is large. A plot advertised as 10 marla is 2,722.5 square feet on the traditional standard, 2,500 on the 250 standard and 2,250 on the 225 standard — a spread of more than 20% for the same three words. Choose your standard above before you read the result, and check which one your seller is using before you agree a price.
Square feet = marla × standard
Where the standard is 272.25 (traditional), 250 (modern societies) or 225 (older schemes).
272.25 square feet — traditional. The historic revenue measure, still used in most of Punjab and by the capital's development authority. It is not arbitrary: 272.25 square feet is exactly 30.25 square yards, and 30.25 is 5.5 squared. A kanal is 20 of these, or 605 square yards, and eight kanal make one acre.
250 square feet — modern housing societies. A rounder figure that many private developments sell against, because it makes plot arithmetic easy: 10 marla is 2,500 square feet, 20 marla is 5,000. It is smaller than the traditional marla by about 8%, so the same plot number buys you less land.
225 square feet — some regions and older schemes. Used in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in some older developments and in a number of Indian states. It is 17% smaller than the traditional marla, the biggest gap between any two of the three.
None of these is wrong. What is wrong is not knowing which one applies to your transaction.
One relationship is fixed everywhere: a kanal is 20 marla. What follows from that is that the kanal's size in square feet depends on which marla you are using — 5,445 square feet at the traditional 272.25, 5,000 at 250, and 4,500 at 225.
Only the traditional marla lines up with the acre. Because 272.25 × 160 = 43,560, exactly one acre, an acre is 160 traditional marla and therefore exactly eight traditional kanal. Switch to the 250 square foot marla and an acre is no longer a whole number of kanal — it is 8.71 of them. That is not a flaw in the arithmetic; it is the reason the traditional standard exists in the form it does.
The calculator applies this consistently. If you change the marla standard, the kanal figure changes with it, so the two never contradict each other.
Most residential plots are sold in a small set of sizes, and knowing the square footage for each on the traditional standard is useful when comparing listings:
On the 250 square foot standard those become 750, 1,250, 1,750, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 square feet — rounder numbers, which is precisely why societies adopted it.
Ask for the dimension in square feet or square metres as well as marla, and see which standard the two figures imply. Divide the stated square footage by the marla figure: 2,722.5 ÷ 10 is 272.25, so that listing is traditional; 2,500 ÷ 10 is 250, so that one is not. It takes a moment and it settles the question.
On a title deed or mutation document, look for the measurement in square feet, square yards or kanal — revenue records usually carry the physical measurement alongside the local unit. If the document mentions kanal, remember it is 20 marla, and check which kanal size the square footage implies.
If the two figures disagree by more than a few percent, ask before you proceed. A plot described as 10 marla that measures 2,500 square feet on the ground is not being misrepresented if the society sells on a 250 square foot marla — but it is 222 square feet less land than the same words mean elsewhere.
| Marla | Traditional (272.25 ft²) | Modern (250 ft²) | Older (225 ft²) | Traditional in m² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 272.25 ft² | 250.00 ft² | 225.00 ft² | 25.29 m² |
| 2 | 544.50 ft² | 500.00 ft² | 450.00 ft² | 50.59 m² |
| 3 | 816.75 ft² | 750.00 ft² | 675.00 ft² | 75.88 m² |
| 5 | 1,361.25 ft² | 1,250.00 ft² | 1,125.00 ft² | 126.46 m² |
| 7 | 1,905.75 ft² | 1,750.00 ft² | 1,575.00 ft² | 177.05 m² |
| 10 | 2,722.50 ft² | 2,500.00 ft² | 2,250.00 ft² | 252.93 m² |
| 15 | 4,083.75 ft² | 3,750.00 ft² | 3,375.00 ft² | 379.39 m² |
| 20 (1 kanal) | 5,445.00 ft² | 5,000.00 ft² | 4,500.00 ft² | 505.86 m² |
| 40 (2 kanal) | 10,890.00 ft² | 10,000.00 ft² | 9,000.00 ft² | 1,011.71 m² |
| 160 (1 acre) | 43,560.00 ft² | 40,000.00 ft² | 36,000.00 ft² | 4,046.86 m² |
Al Sadat Builders is a construction contractor based in Islamabad, Pakistan, led on site by Syed Mujtaba Shah. These calculators are free to use wherever you are — they print no currency and assume no country. If you are building in Islamabad, Rawalpindi or Bani Gala, we can survey the plot, price the job and hand you an itemised BOQ.