Volume, Area and Surface Area Calculator: Cylinder, Sphere, Cone, Box and More
Free volume, area, surface area and perimeter calculator for 27 shapes: cube, box, cylinder, cone, sphere, pyramid, torus, circle, triangle, trapezoid and more. Shows every formula, converts to litres, gallons and acres, and works backwards from a target volume.
Drag a letter to move it. “Reset view” below the 3D picture puts them back.
Drag to rotate, scroll or pinch to zoom. The drawing uses your numbers (or an example until you type some), scaled to fit.
In other units
Work it backwards
Area, surface area and volume: what is the difference?
Area measures flat space (square units: m², ft²). Surface area is the total area of the outside of a 3D solid: add up every face. Volume is the space inside a solid (cubic units: m³, in³), which is also its capacity: 1,000 cm³ = 1 litre. Perimeter and circumference are distances around a flat shape.
Formulas used by this calculator
Questions
- How do I find the volume of a cylinder?
- V = πr²h. A can with radius 3 cm and height 10 cm holds π × 9 × 10 ≈ 282.7 cm³, about 0.28 litres.
- Why does doubling a length multiply the area by 4 and the volume by 8?
- Area depends on two lengths multiplied together and volume on three, so scaling every length by k scales areas by k² and volumes by k³. The “work it backwards” box uses this.
- Are the ellipse perimeter and ellipsoid surface area exact?
- No exact formula exists for either. This page uses Ramanujan's ellipse approximation (accurate to a tiny fraction of a percent for all but extreme shapes) and Knud Thomsen's ellipsoid formula (within about 1%).
- Is my data private?
- Yes. Everything is calculated in your browser.
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