Fahrenheit to Celsius Converter
Convert Fahrenheit (°F) to Celsius (°C) instantly, or use the conversion table below to look up common values.
Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion table
| Fahrenheit (°F) | Celsius (°C) |
|---|---|
| 1 | -17.222222 |
| 2 | -16.666667 |
| 3 | -16.111111 |
| 4 | -15.555556 |
| 5 | -15 |
| 10 | -12.222222 |
| 25 | -3.888889 |
| 50 | 10 |
| 100 | 37.777778 |
How to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius
1 °F equals -17.222222 °C. Use the converter above for any value, or read the table for common conversions.
°C = (°F − 32) × 5/9 · °F = °C × 9/5 + 32Temperature is an offset scale rather than a simple multiplier, so use the formulas above — multiplying a Celsius figure by 9/5 without adding 32 gives the wrong answer.
Worked examples
- 0 °F= -17.777778 °C
- 10 °F= -12.222222 °C
- 20 °F= -6.666667 °C
- 37 °F= 2.777778 °C
- 100 °F= 37.777778 °C
What these units are
Fahrenheit (°F). Fahrenheit places the freezing point of water at 32 °F and boiling at 212 °F. It is used mainly in the United States, for weather, cooking and body temperature.
Celsius (°C). Celsius is the metric temperature scale: 0 °C is the freezing point of water and 100 °C its boiling point at sea level. It is the everyday scale in Tanzania and most of the world.
The arithmetic is exact; only the display is rounded. 37 °C is exactly 98.6 °F, while 36.6 °C displays as 97.9 °F.
Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius in practice
Working in fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is an affine temperature scale that fixes the freezing point of water at 32 °F and the boiling point at 212 °F at one atmosphere, matching 0 °C and 100 °C.
Fahrenheit remains the everyday scale for weather reporting, cooking oven settings and body temperature in the United States, while science, medicine and most other countries report temperatures in Celsius.
Because Fahrenheit is an offset scale, subtracting 32 first is required; multiplying by 5/9 alone gives a wrong answer. One Fahrenheit degree is five ninths of a Celsius degree.
A frequent mistake is reading a Fahrenheit figure as Celsius, which makes an 80 °F day look like 80 °C on a Celsius-first site. The two scales agree at exactly −40, the single point where both read the same.
Fahrenheit and Celsius are applied to the same jobs, so an oven setting and a weather reading can be misread when the scale is dropped. Kelvin is the third scale, and it stays in scientific use.
Reading the result in celsius
Celsius is an affine temperature scale with two fixed points: water freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C at one atmosphere. It is not a multiplier applied to a quantity.
Celsius is the everyday scale for weather reporting, cooking and oven settings, refrigeration, medicine and most laboratory and engineering work, and it is the working scale wherever metric measures are used.
Celsius is an offset scale, so a Fahrenheit value cannot be converted by multiplying by 1.8 alone; 32 must be added or subtracted. Absolute zero is −273.15 °C, which is 0 K.
A common error is quoting a body temperature in Fahrenheit without noting that this site is Celsius-first, so 98.6 °F appears as 37 °C here. The two scales meet only at −40.
Celsius and Fahrenheit share the weather, oven and body-temperature roles, so a bare number is ambiguous; 30 means a hot day in Celsius and a cold one in Fahrenheit. Kelvin takes over in scientific work where absolute values matter.
Checking a fahrenheit to celsius conversion
Celsius to Kelvin is the only temperature pair that behaves like a simple conversion: same degree size, different zero, so the value shifts by 273.15 and no multiplication is involved. Every pair involving Fahrenheit is affine, meaning a scale factor and an offset applied together.
That is why this dimension is the exception to the rest of the converter. Multiplying a Celsius figure by 9/5 gives a number that is not a Fahrenheit temperature, because the 32-degree offset is still missing. The result only becomes correct when the addition is made in the right order.
Checking a temperature conversion is easiest at a value whose answer you know: water freezing and boiling, body temperature, or the single reading of −40 where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales agree. The error to watch for is dropping the offset when converting a temperature difference, where it genuinely does not apply.
Tanzania reference points
Real quantities, converted into the units on this page.
Tanzania's long-term mean monthly maximum temperature
28.2 °C = 82.76 °F
The 1981–2010 baseline is 28.2 °C against 28.5 °C for 2012–2018, which the report reads as a warming trend. It is a national mean across meteorological stations, not the temperature in any one town.
Source: National Bureau of Statistics — National Climate Change Report 2019 (Tanzania Meteorological Agency station data) · verified 2026-09-14
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