About this chart
Wire Gauge Chart is a single, focused reference for American Wire Gauge sizes. Pick a gauge and you can see its diameter in inches and millimetres, its cross-sectional area in mm² and kcmil, its copper resistance, and its NEC current rating — for both copper and aluminum, without hopping between a PDF, a calculator, and a forum thread.
We built it because the pages that rank for "wire gauge chart" tend to fall into two camps. Some are static tables — accurate enough, but frozen, tiny on a phone, and wrapped in store navigation or encyclopedia clutter. Others are single-purpose calculators that spit out one number and stop. None of them put a searchable table, an honest AWG-to-mm² converter, and a plain-language guide to ampacity in one clean place that works in the dark and on a job site. That gap is the whole reason this site exists.
Where the numbers come from
Conductor dimensions follow the ASTM B258 geometric definition of AWG, so diameter and area are computed from the standard rather than copied from a table that may contain typos. Current ratings come from NEC Table 310.16, and we cross-checked them against multiple independent reproductions of the code before publishing — catching, for example, sources that wrongly list 14 AWG copper at 20 A instead of its correct 15 A at 60 °C. That data lives in one typed module covered by tests, so a value can't quietly drift.
An honest reference, not a shortcut
Electrical work is safety-critical, so we try hard not to oversimplify. The site is explicit that ampacity figures are before-derating values, that terminal ratings and 240.4(D) breaker caps can lower the usable size, and that local codes vary. It is a learning and look-up tool — not a design document, and not a replacement for the current NEC or a licensed electrician.
Independent and private
This is an independent project published by Worklifted Technologies. There is no account to create and no email to hand over; conversions and lookups run entirely in your browser. If you spot a value that looks off, the contact page is the fastest way to flag it — accuracy reports get priority.