Shoe Size From Foot Length and Fit

This page starts from a measured foot, not from a size you already own. If you know your size and just want the same number in another country’s scale, the shoe size converter does that in one step and updates every field as you type. Come here instead when you have a tape measure and a decision to make about what to buy.

Every size scale is a code for one number: your foot length in centimetres.

US Men = 6 + (foot cm − 24.0) US Women = US Men + 1.5 UK = US Men − 0.5 EU = (foot cm + 1.33) × 1.5 Mondopoint = foot cm × 10

Two of those deserve a note. US Women is 1.5 above US Men, not 2. A men’s 9 is a women’s 10.5. The half-size-larger version turns up on plenty of charts and it is simply wrong against the Brannock scale that American retail is built on.

EU does not step one-for-one with US. One US size is one centimetre of foot, and one centimetre is 1.5 Paris points, so EU climbs half again as fast. US 8 is EU 41, US 9 is EU 42.5, US 10 is EU 44. Any conversion that adds a fixed number to your US size is right at one point on the scale and drifting everywhere else.

Where the +1.33 in the EU formula comes from

The European scale counts Paris points, and a Paris point is two thirds of a centimetre. It measures the last, which is the wooden or plastic form a shoe is built around, not the foot that goes inside it. A last runs about 1.3 cm longer than the foot it is cut for. That toe room is the whole of the mysterious “+2” you see in the short version of the formula.

Mondopoint is the only scale that measures your actual foot. It is what ski boots and military issue use, and it is why this page reports it.

Why the same foot buys different sizes

Standard charts bake in roughly 1.3 cm past the longest toe. That is right for a shoe you walk in. It is too much for a dress shoe worn with thin socks and nowhere near enough for a running shoe, where the foot slides forward on every downhill step, or for a hiking boot over a thick wool sock.

Half a centimetre of toe room is half a shoe size, because one US size is one centimetre of foot. That is why the steps in that table come out as clean half sizes rather than as awkward fractions.

The running number is the one people argue about and then learn the hard way. A bruised or blackened toenail after a long downhill is almost always a shoe that fit perfectly standing still in a shop.

Measure properly or none of this helps

Stand on a sheet of paper with your heel against a wall. Mark the tip of your longest toe, which is not always the big toe. Measure both feet and use the larger, since most people have one about half a size bigger than the other. Do it late in the day, because feet swell by up to half a size between morning and evening.

Width is a separate dimension and no length conversion contains it. US sizes carry a letter, running from 4A at the narrowest through B (standard for women) and D (standard for men) out to 6E. The EU scale has no width code at all, which is why a European size that matches on length can still pinch across the ball of the foot. If your size fits front to back but hurts across the widest part, you want a wider fitting rather than a longer shoe.

Expect brand variation to swamp any arithmetic here. Two models from the same maker, in the same nominal size, routinely differ by a third of a size.