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🥚 Ellipse Area and Circumference Calculator

Calculate the area and circumference of an ellipse from its semi-major and semi-minor axis lengths.

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What this calculator finds

An ellipse is a stretched circle defined by two axes: the semi-major axis (a), the longer half-axis, and the semi-minor axis (b), the shorter half-axis. This calculator finds both the area and the circumference (perimeter) of an ellipse.

The formulas

Area = π · a · b — this is exact, a direct extension of the circle area formula.

Circumference has no simple exact formula, so this calculator uses Ramanujan’s second approximation, which is accurate to within a fraction of a percent for almost any ellipse shape: C ≈ π(a+b)[1 + 3h / (10 + √(4 − 3h))], where h = (a−b)² / (a+b)².

When a and b are equal, the ellipse becomes a circle and both formulas reduce to the familiar circle formulas. This tool is for general math and educational purposes.

Last reviewed August 2026