Lakh vs Crore — Which Is Bigger?
1 crore is bigger — it equals 100 lakh. Written out, 1 crore is 1,00,00,000 and 1 lakh is 1,00,000. Going the other way, 1 lakh is 0.01 crore.
Side by side
| 1 Lakh, Indian digits | 1,00,000 |
| 1 Lakh, international digits | 100,000 |
| 1 Lakh as a power of ten | 10⁵ |
| 1 Lakh on the other scale | 100 Thousand |
| 1 Crore, Indian digits | 1,00,00,000 |
| 1 Crore, international digits | 10,000,000 |
| 1 Crore as a power of ten | 10⁷ |
| 1 Crore on the other scale | 10 Million |
Both directions
To go from crore to lakh, multiply by 100. So 5 crore is 500 lakh, and 100 crore is 10,000 lakh.
To go the other way, divide by 100. 500 lakh is 5 crore, and 1 lakh is 0.01 crore.
Where each one is used
Lakh is the everyday unit of Indian personal finance: salaries, car prices, insurance cover and fee structures are all quoted in lakh. Outside South Asia it is essentially unused, which is why "5 lakh" so often has to be restated as "500,000" for an international reader.
Crore is the unit Indian public life runs on — film budgets and box office, cricket auction fees, company results, government schemes. Indian English almost never leaves it, preferring "1,20,000 crore" to switching up to a larger unit.
Lakh to Crore at a glance
The full scale
| Indian unit | Digits | Power | International |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thousand | 1,000 | 10³ | 1 Thousand |
| Lakh | 1,00,000 | 10⁵ | 100 Thousand |
| Crore | 1,00,00,000 | 10⁷ | 10 Million |
| Arab | 1,00,00,00,000 | 10⁹ | 1 Billion |
| Kharab | 1,00,00,00,00,000 | 10¹¹ | 100 Billion |
| Neel | 1,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 10¹³ | 10 Trillion |
| Padma | 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 10¹⁵ | 1 Quadrillion |
| Shankh | 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 10¹⁷ | 100 Quadrillion |
Convert any amount
Indian system
International system
Frequently asked questions
Which is bigger, lakh or crore?
Crore. One crore equals 100 lakh, so it is 100 times the size.
How many lakhs are in 1 crore?
100. In digits, 1 crore is 1,00,00,000 and 1 lakh is 1,00,000.
Why do the two systems have different units at all?
The international system introduces a new name every three digits — thousand, million, billion, trillion. The Indian system introduces one every two digits after a thousand — lakh, crore, arab, kharab. Both count the same way; they just group and name the digits differently, which is also why Indian commas fall at 1,00,00,000 rather than 10,000,000.
Is 1,00,00,000 the same as 10,000,000?
Yes — those are the same number written with Indian and international commas. Only the punctuation changes; the digits and the value do not.