CBM calculator
Calculate cubic metres for cartons or pallets, convert CBM to chargeable kilograms for air, sea and road, and see which basis your freight will actually be billed on.
0.096 m³ per carton · 339 ft³
Air freight (IATA) is 7,996.8 kg lower than Sea LCL (weight/measure) — a 83% difference on the same shipment.
Same consignment, four answers. This is why a forwarder can undercut an express carrier on a bulky pallet and lose to them on a dense one.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| CBM per cartonCentimetres cubed divided by a million gives cubic metres. | 60 × 40 × 40 ÷ 1,000,000 | 0.096 m³ |
| Total CBM for 100 cartons | 0.096 × 100 | 9.6 m³ |
| Volumetric weight — Sea LCL (weight/measure)LCL is quoted per revenue tonne: whichever is greater, 1 CBM or 1000 kg.Source: Ocean freight trade practice (no issuing authority) | 9.6 × 1000 | 9,600 kg |
| Chargeable weight | max(1200 actual, 9600 volumetric) | 9,600 kg |
Step 1 of 3 — I am importing stock
What will a unit actually cost me, landed and cleared?
The unit every freight quote is written in
Cubic metres are the common currency of freight. A forwarder quoting sea, a warehouse quoting storage and an airline quoting cargo will all ask for CBM before they ask for anything else, because volume is the constraint that binds first on almost everything that is not metal or liquid. The arithmetic is length times width times height in metres — or the same three numbers in centimetres divided by a million — and the part worth getting right is what you measure rather than how you multiply it.
Measure the packed carton, not the product. Then, if the goods are going on pallets, measure the loaded pallet including overhang and the pallet's own height, because that is the space the shipment actually occupies in a container. The gap between summed carton volume and summed pallet volume is routinely 15 to 25%, and it is the difference between a quote that holds and one that is revised after the goods are collected.
Converting CBM to a chargeable weight
One cubic metre is not one number of kilograms. It is 167 kg as air freight under the IATA convention, 200 kg to an express courier working on a 5000 divisor, and 1,000 kg to a sea LCL operator billing per revenue tonne. The same carton therefore has three different chargeable weights depending only on how it travels, which is why a CBM figure quoted without its mode is not yet an answer. This calculator shows all three so the comparison is between like and like.
Questions people ask about this
Answers written from the published rules, not from other people's summaries of them. Every figure quoted below is listed with its source at the foot of this page.
Every formula on this siteHow do you calculate CBM?
Length times width times height in metres. If you are measuring in centimetres, multiply the three and divide by one million. A 60 by 40 by 40 cm carton is 96,000 cubic centimetres, which is 0.096 CBM.
How many kg is 1 CBM?
It depends entirely on the mode, and this is where quotes get misread. Air freight bills 1 CBM as 167 kg. A courier bills it as 200 kg. Sea LCL bills it as 1,000 kg. The same box therefore has three different chargeable weights depending on how it travels.
What is a revenue tonne?
The LCL billing unit: whichever is greater of one cubic metre or one metric tonne. Because most consumer goods are lighter than 1,000 kg per cubic metre, LCL is usually billed on volume.
Why does my forwarder's CBM differ from mine?
Almost always because one of you measured cartons and the other measured loaded pallets. A forwarder quotes the space your goods occupy on the vessel, which includes the pallet base, the overhang and the height you cannot fill because the next tier will not clear the container door. If your figure is the sum of the cartons and theirs is 20% higher, that gap is the pallet — and the fix is to design the carton to the pallet footprint rather than to argue about the measurement.
How many CBM is a standard pallet?
A Euro pallet is 1.2 by 0.8 metres, so a 1.8 metre loaded height including the pallet is about 1.73 CBM. A GMA pallet at 1.2 by 1.0 metres and the same height is about 2.16 CBM. Those are the volumes to plan a container around, not the volume of the goods sitting on them — anything you do not fill you still pay for, because the space is committed the moment the pallet is built.
Should I quote CBM or cubic feet?
Follow the mode. Sea and air freight worldwide, and road freight outside North America, are quoted in cubic metres. US domestic LTL works in cubic feet and converts to a density in pounds per cubic foot to set the freight class. One cubic metre is 35.315 cubic feet. Quoting the wrong unit to a US LTL carrier is a common way to get a quote back that is out by a factor of thirty-five.
Further reading
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Where these numbers come from
Rates and rules change, and a calculator running on stale data is worse than no calculator. Every figure below carries the date we last checked it and a confidence level, so you can judge how much weight to put on it.
| Source | Publisher | Effective | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| IATA volumetric ratio for air cargo (1:6000) 6000 cubic centimetres per kilogram, equivalently 167 kg per cubic metre. This is why an air-freight quote and a courier quote on the same box differ: couriers use 5000, giving 200 kg per cubic metre. Marked corroborated rather than primary on purpose — the governing text is the IATA TACT Rules, which are a paid subscription and cannot be linked to a page a reader can open, so we link IATA's public cargo programme page and rely on agreement between independent forwarders for the ratio itself. | IATA | Not specifiedChecked 2026-08-24 | Corroborated |
| LCL weight-or-measure (W/M) revenue tonne LCL is quoted per revenue tonne: whichever is greater of 1 cubic metre or 1,000 kg. This citation points at our own worked explanation rather than an external document because there is no issuing body to point at — W/M is commercial practice between carriers and forwarders, not a published tariff rule, and any third-party page stating it is doing exactly what we are doing here. We would rather say that plainly than dress up a competitor blog as an authority. | Ocean freight trade practice (no issuing authority) | Not specifiedChecked 2026-08-24 | Corroborated |
Page updated . Spotted something out of date? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.
More on the working: every formula on this site, the full source register, what the terms mean, and how we decide what to publish. What an estimate here can and cannot support is set out in the accuracy notes.