Distance Calculator

Get the latitude and longitude of each point — in Google Maps you can right-click a spot to copy them — then paste both into this calculator. It returns the straight-line, as-the-crow-flies distance in kilometers, miles and nautical miles, plus the initial bearing between them.

Haversine assumes the Earth is a perfect sphere, so it is typically within 0.3% of the true distance — about 3 km error over a 1,000 km leg. That is fine for planning, aviation estimates and app development. Surveying-grade work should use Vincenty or Karney formulas on the WGS-84 ellipsoid instead.

Haversine treats the Earth as a sphere and gives a fast, closed-form answer accurate to roughly 0.3%. Vincenty iterates on the WGS-84 ellipsoid and is accurate to about 0.5 mm, but it is slower and can fail to converge for nearly antipodal points. For most practical distance checks Haversine is the sensible choice.

It is the compass direction you would face at the start point to head toward the destination along the great circle. Because great circles curve relative to lines of longitude, the bearing changes as you travel — the initial bearing is only correct at the departure point.

Because the shortest path between two points on a sphere is a great circle, which on a flat map looks curved toward the pole. New York to London passes near Newfoundland and south of Greenland — exactly the path this calculator measures.

One nautical mile is 1,852 metres, defined as one minute of latitude, versus 1,609.344 metres for a statute mile. That is why aviation and shipping use nautical miles — they map directly onto coordinates. This tool shows all three units side by side.