Kanal to Marla Converter: Quick Reference Table

Updated August 2026Calculators & Converters

Property listings, construction quotes, and land records in Pakistan mix units depending on the region and who wrote the document, so converting between Kanal and Marla comes up constantly for anyone buying, selling, or building. Here's the conversion factor and a ready reference table so you don't have to redo the math every time you come across a listing in the "wrong" unit.

Quick reference table

Why unit confusion happens so often in Pakistani real estate

Pakistan uses a mix of British-colonial-era land units (kanal, marla) alongside metric and imperial measurements (square feet, square meters), and which one a document uses often just comes down to local convention rather than any single standard. Punjab tends to favor marla and kanal in casual conversation and even in some official records, while newer developments and commercial listings increasingly quote everything in square feet to make properties easier to compare across regions and against international benchmarks. Karachi's real estate market leans more heavily on square yards for older properties, adding yet another unit into the mix depending on which city you're comparing listings in.

If you're comparing two listings that use different units, converting both to the same base before comparing price-per-unit is the only way to avoid an apples-to-oranges mistake, and it's a mistake that happens constantly, a plot quoted at an attractive per-marla price can look completely different once converted to the same per-square-foot basis as a competing listing.

Common places this conversion actually matters

• Comparing plot listings across different real estate portals, some quote in marla, others in square feet, and a few list both but not consistently.
• Reading a DC valuation table, which may use a different base unit than what a broker quotes verbally during a viewing.
• Construction quotes, where contractors sometimes price per square foot even when the plot itself is described in marla or kanal, making it hard to sanity-check a quote without converting first.
• Verifying a registry document against a listing to make sure the area described actually matches what you're being shown.
• Splitting inherited land, where family members may be more familiar with different units and need a shared reference to agree on a fair division.

A note on regional and historical variation

The marla itself has not always been perfectly standardized across every part of Pakistan historically, though the modern standard (used in Punjab and most official contexts today, and the one this conversion is based on) is what appears in current DC valuation tables and most contemporary listings. If you're working with a very old registry document, especially from before land record digitization, it's worth double-checking the exact unit definition used in that specific record rather than assuming it matches the current standard, since some older regional definitions used slightly different area figures per unit.

Worked example

Say you're comparing two plots: one listed at 8 Marla for Rs. 12,000,000, and another listed at 2,000 sq ft for Rs. 11,000,000. Converting the first to square feet (8 × 272.25 = 2,178 sq ft) gives a price of roughly Rs. 5,510 per sq ft, while the second works out to Rs. 5,500 per sq ft, essentially the same value despite the very different headline prices and units. Without converting first, the second listing might look like the better deal simply because the total price is lower, when the actual per-unit value is nearly identical. This is worth reading alongside our guide on Marla to Sqft Converter if that's also relevant to you. For a closer look at this from another angle, see our guide on Sqft to Marla Converter.

Frequently asked questions