Distance Between Two Points
Click the map, search an address, or paste coordinates to set two points, and get the as-the-crow-flies distance between them in miles, kilometers and nautical miles, plus the initial compass bearing.
Editing Point A -- click the map, search an address, or paste coordinates below to set it.
Search powered by OpenStreetMap Nominatim, limited to one lookup per second. Didn't find it? Click the map instead.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Distance and bearing
Miles
3,461.2
Kilometers
5,570.2
Nautical miles
3,007.7
Initial bearing
51.2° (NE)
This is the great-circle ("as the crow flies") distance, and the bearing is the compass heading at the very start of that path only -- see the note below on why it changes along the route.
The formula, in full
This tool computes the great-circle distance with the haversine formula, on a sphere of radius R = 6,371.009 km (the WGS-84 mean radius -- see the FAQ below for why that specific number):
a = sin²(Δφ/2) + cos(φ1)·cos(φ2)·sin²(Δλ/2)
c = 2·atan2(√a, √(1-a))
distance = R · c
φ1 and φ2 are the two points' latitudes in radians, Δφ and Δλ are the differences in latitude and longitude between them. The result, distance, comes out in the same unit as R -- kilometers here, then converted to miles and nautical miles for display using the exact constants 1 mi = 1.609344 km and 1 NM = 1.852 km.
Distances between well-known city pairs
Computed live by this page with the exact same haversineKm and initialBearing functions the tool above uses -- not typed in by hand, and checked against independently hand-derived values in the site's own test suite.
| From | To | Miles | Km | Bearing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York City Hall | London (Big Ben) | 3,461.2 | 5,570.2 | 51.2° (NE) |
| Los Angeles City Hall | Tokyo Station | 5,474.5 | 8,810.4 | 306.0° (NW) |
| Sydney Opera House | Cape Town City Hall | 6,843.2 | 11,013.1 | 218.1° (SW) |
| Chicago (The Loop) | Mexico City (Zócalo) | 1,691.5 | 2,722.2 | 207.0° (SSW) |
The tool above loads with the New York-London pair by default, so you can check its live numbers against this table's first row immediately.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "as the crow flies" mean, exactly?
It means the straight-line distance between two points along the Earth's curved surface -- the shortest possible path, ignoring roads, terrain, borders and buildings entirely, the way a bird could fly directly between them. It's always shorter than (or, in the rare case of a dead-straight road, equal to) any real driving or walking route.
Why is this called the haversine formula, and what does it actually compute?
The name comes from "half a versine" (versine = 1 - cosine), an old trigonometric function once common in navigation tables because it stays numerically well-behaved for small angles, where a plain cosine-based formula loses precision. The formula treats the Earth as a perfect sphere and computes the great-circle distance between two latitude/longitude points -- the shortest path along that sphere's surface, which for a sphere is always an arc of a "great circle" (a circle whose plane passes through the Earth's center, like the equator or any meridian).
Why 6,371.0088 km for the Earth's radius, specifically?
The Earth isn't a perfect sphere -- it bulges slightly at the equator (radius about 6,378.137 km) and is slightly flattened at the poles (about 6,356.7523 km), per the WGS-84 reference ellipsoid used by GPS. 6,371.0088 km is the WGS-84 mean radius: treating the Earth as a single sphere of this radius keeps a haversine distance within roughly 0.5% of the true ellipsoidal distance almost everywhere, which is accurate enough for any practical, non-survey use.
What is the "initial bearing" and why does it say "initial"?
It's the compass heading you'd start walking or flying on on to follow the great-circle path from point A to point B. The word "initial" matters because that heading changes continuously along the route (except along the equator or a straight north-south line) -- this is the same reason flight paths on a flat map often look like a curve rather than a straight line: a straight line on a flat Mercator map is not the shortest path on a sphere, and the shortest path's compass heading isn't constant.
Why is my driving distance so much longer than the number this tool gives me?
Because this tool never looks at roads at all -- it's pure geometry between two coordinates. Real travel distance depends on the actual road network, one-way streets, water crossings, mountains, and international borders, all of which can add anywhere from a few percent to several times the straight-line distance. This site intentionally doesn't offer routing or driving directions; use a dedicated mapping/navigation service for that.
Can I paste coordinates instead of clicking the map?
Yes -- paste either decimal degrees ("40.7128, -74.0060") or degrees-minutes-seconds ("40°42'46"N 74°00'22"W") into the box under either point and click "Set point." Invalid or out-of-range input is rejected rather than silently guessed at; if you're not sure of the format, the Coordinates Converter page can help.
Every distance, area and radius on this site is a geometric estimate from the coordinates you provide, not a survey-grade measurement -- and this tool does not calculate driving routes or travel time. See the Terms.