The ≤ you reach for when a value can be smaller than another value or exactly equal to it — Alt+243 on Windows, \leq in LaTeX, and ≤ in HTML. Click to copy it instantly.
Click to copy · U+2264
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Character | ≤ |
| Unicode code point | U+2264 |
| Unicode name | LESS-THAN OR EQUAL TO |
| Unicode block | Mathematical Operators |
| Category | Math symbol |
| Mirror form | ≥ Greater-Than or Equal To (U+2265) |
The less-than-or-equal-to symbol (≤, U+2264) combines the less-than sign with a horizontal bar underneath, showing that a value can be smaller than another value or exactly equal to it — the relation behind everything from simple inequalities to the closed intervals of calculus. Unlike the strict < and > signs, which English mathematician Thomas Harriot introduced in 1631, the combined ≤/≥ pair is a later refinement: French mathematician Pierre Bouguer is generally credited with introducing it in 1734, in his essay on the gradation of light. ASCII never allocated ≤ its own slot, which is why almost every programming language falls back on the two-character <= instead of the single Unicode glyph.
The strict inequality signs < and > are much older than their "or equal to" cousins. English mathematician Thomas Harriot introduced them in his posthumously published Artis Analyticae Praxis (1631), but Harriot's symbols only expressed strict inequality — they said nothing about the possibility of equality.
The combined ≤/≥ forms arrived over a century later. French mathematician and hydrographer Pierre Bouguer is generally credited with introducing them in 1734, in his essay on the gradation of light (Essai d'optique sur la gradation de la lumière) — placing a horizontal bar beneath the angle brackets to fuse "less than" (or "greater than") with "equals" into a single glyph. A January 1734 letter from Christian Goldbach to Leonhard Euler independently corroborates that Bouguer's notation was the one that caught on and spread among other mathematicians. Unicode later encoded that same design in the Mathematical Operators block as U+2264 LESS-THAN OR EQUAL TO, alongside its mirror image U+2265 GREATER-THAN OR EQUAL TO.
The math symbol, and the two-character stand-in most programming languages use instead since ≤ itself was never part of ASCII.
These all mean roughly the same thing but are distinct Unicode characters from different typesetting traditions.
| Method | Input |
|---|---|
| Windows Alt code | Alt+243 on the numeric keypad |
| Mac | No dedicated shortcut — use the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) and search "less than or equal" |
| HTML entity | ≤ or ≤ |
| CSS content | content: "\2264" |
| LaTeX | \leq or \le |
| Code / programming | <= (two-character ASCII stand-in) |
≤ is one of dozens of operators, Greek letters, and set-theory symbols in the full math symbols library.
Browse Math Symbols →≤ means "less than or equal to" — the value on the left is smaller than, or exactly the same as, the value on the right. For example, x ≤ 5 allows x to be 5 or any number below it, unlike the strict x < 5, which excludes 5.
On Windows, hold Alt and type 243 on the numeric keypad (Alt+243). On Mac, there's no dedicated shortcut — use the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) and search "less than or equal." In LaTeX, use \leq or \le. In HTML, use the entity ≤ or ≤.
ASCII, the character set most early programming languages were built around, never allocated a slot for ≤ — only the plain < and > keys existed. Languages adopted the two-character <= as a practical workaround, and it stuck even after Unicode made the single ≤ glyph universally available.
All three mean "less than or equal to," but they're different Unicode characters from different traditions: ≤ (U+2264) is the everyday version used almost everywhere; ≦ (U+2266) stacks the equals sign in a double-line form seen in some older or East Asian texts; ⩽ (U+2A7D) uses a single slanted bar and is the form preferred by the ISO 31-11 mathematical standard. They render similarly in casual use but are not the same codepoint.