Shoe size converter

How to measure your foot

1. Measure late in the day, when feet are at their largest, wearing the kind of socks that will be worn with the shoes.
2. Put a sheet of paper on a hard floor against a wall and stand on it with the heel touching the wall.
3. Mark the tip of the longest toe on the paper. It isn’t always the big toe; keep the pen upright.
4. Measure straight from the wall to the mark, in centimeters or inches.
5. Do both feet and use the longer one. Enter that length in the converter above as a foot length.

The foot lengths on this page are bare-foot measurements. The shoe itself is longer, so don’t measure an old shoe or insole and treat that as your foot length.

Width and between sizes

Length is only half of fit. US shoes are often sold in widths marked with letters. A common convention: men’s standard width is D, wide is 2E and extra wide is 4E; women’s standard is B and wide is D. Letters vary by brand, and many brands use words such as narrow, regular and wide instead.

If your measurement falls between two sizes:

• Measure late in the day, when feet are at their largest.
• Let the longer foot decide; most people have one foot slightly longer than the other.
• Think about the socks: thick hiking or winter socks take up more room than thin dress socks.
• Think about what the shoe is for. People often choose a little more room in athletic or hiking shoes than in dress shoes.
• If you can, try both sizes on and walk around before deciding.

Using a brand’s own chart

For a final answer, look up the official size chart on the brand’s own website, for the exact product line if it has one. Compare by foot length in centimeters rather than by size number: find the brand’s row for your measured foot length and read the size from there.

Size numbers don’t always mean the same length from one brand to the next. Some brands, particularly in sportswear, list EU sizes about half a size higher than generic charts like this one, and some use their own offsets between UK and US sizes. This page doesn’t guess any brand’s offsets; it shows one consistent reference chart.

How the systems work

Shoe sizes are counted on the last, the foot-shaped form a shoe is built around, not on your foot. Each system counts that length in its own unit from its own starting point, which is why the numbers never line up neatly. This page uses one reference chart generated from the definitions below, so every table and the converter agree.

Real brands start from these definitions but make their own choices about toe room, rounding and offsets. Expect up to half a size of difference in the middle of the range, and sometimes a full size at the very small and very large ends, where brand charts often compress the EU scale. Japanese and Korean labels on a given shoe can also run a little above the bare foot length, depending on the brand.

Australia, Mexico and Brazil aren’t shown: their shoe sizes follow different conventions from one source to the next, and we couldn’t pin down one standard to rely on.