Free calculator
Story points to hours, from your team's own history.
There's no universal conversion, and that's the point of story points. But your last few sprints say how many hours a point has taken your team. Enter them, then turn any estimate into hours and a finish date.
1. Your last sprints
SprintPoints finishedPerson-days the team had
2. The work you want to size
For your team, one point has taken about
6.8 h
between 6.3 and 7.7 hours across 3 sprints
21 points is about
132–162 hours
5.5–6.8 working days for 4 people, so done between Oct 26 and Oct 27, most likely around Oct 26.
Skips weekends and US federal holidays. It doesn't know about anyone's time off, so check the calendar before you promise a date.
Why there's no fixed conversion, and when a ratio is fine.
Story points measure size relative to other work: this is about twice that. They mix effort, complexity and uncertainty. Two engineers take different hours for the same 3-point story, and the same engineer takes different hours in a quiet week and in a week full of interviews. If you fix a rate like one point equals four hours, people start estimating in hours and dividing by four, and you've lost what points were good at.
A ratio from your own past sprints is different. It's backward-looking, it's a range rather than a number, and it already includes meetings, reviews and interruptions. Use it to answer “roughly when?” for a stakeholder, never to set estimates.
The one thing the ratio can't see is who's around. A 21-point piece of work started the week before Thanksgiving takes longer than the same work in February. Check the team's time off before you give a date, or use the sprint capacity calculator to see a sprint's real size.
Hours per point is the pace. The calendar is who's here.
Your ratio assumes a normal sprint. Here's a team's sprints with the vacations, sick days and holidays in each. This board is live.
- Each sprint is a band across the team
- Time off and holidays inside each sprint
- The summary names who's away during each sprint
- Drag time off in and see who's missing
Questions
How many hours is a story point?
There's no fixed number. A point is relative size, and the hours depend on the team. Your own history gives a range: divide the hours the team had in recent sprints by the points it finished.
Should you convert story points to hours?
Not for estimating, because people start estimating in hours and the relative sizing is lost. A team-specific, backward-looking ratio is fine for budgeting or a rough date, as long as it stays a range.
How do you calculate hours per story point?
For each recent sprint, multiply the person-days the team actually had by the focused hours per day, and divide by the points finished. Average a few sprints and keep the range.
Is 1 story point equal to 1 day?
Only if your team's history says so. Some teams start out that way, but over time points drift away from days, which is fine: they measure size, not time.