Coordinate Converter

What it's for

Change a position from one way of writing it to another. GPS apps, maps, geocaching sites, Ordnance Survey maps, mountain rescue and amateur radio all write the same place differently, and this reads any of them and gives you every other form at once.

For example, when a geocache listing gives N 51° 30.044 W 000° 07.478 and your walking map uses Ordnance Survey grid references, paste the coordinates here and copy the grid reference.

How to use it

Type or paste a position. It’s read as you type, and the message line says what it was read as. It takes:

• Latitude and longitude as decimal degrees (51.5007, -0.1246), degrees and decimal minutes (N 51° 30.044 W 000° 07.478) or degrees, minutes and seconds (51°30'02.6"N 0°07'28.7"W), with N, S, E and W before or after each part, or a minus sign for south and west.
• UTM (30U 699565 5709431) and MGRS (30U XC 99565 09431), the military grid.
• An Ordnance Survey grid reference for Great Britain, with or without spaces (TQ 30267 79644, TQ3026779644).
• A Plus Code (9C3XGV2G+74), a geohash or a Maidenhead locator (IO91wm).
• A link from OpenStreetMap, Google Maps or Apple Maps, or a geo: link.

If it guesses the format wrongly, choose the right one in Read as. Each result has a Copy button, and the links below them open the position in OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Example

Type this:

N 51° 30.044 W 000° 07.478

It’s read as latitude and longitude. Among the results are decimal degrees 51.500733, -0.124633, UTM 30U 699565 5709431, MGRS 30U XC 99565 09431, the OS grid reference TQ 30267 79644, the Plus Code 9C3XGV2G+74 and the Maidenhead locator IO91wm50.

Good to know

Everything is on the WGS84 datum that GPS uses, except Ordnance Survey grid references, which are converted with the Ordnance Survey’s standard formula. That’s good to about 5 metres: for survey work you need the Ordnance Survey’s own OSTN15 transformation. Grid references for Great Britain only appear for places in it; Northern Ireland’s Irish Grid isn’t covered. UTM and MGRS stop at 80° south and 84° north (the polar grids aren’t covered).

A grid reference, Plus Code, geohash or locator stands for a square, not a point: its centre is used (the south-west corner for grid references). A short Plus Code such as GV2G+74 London needs a place name to make sense, so use the full code. The links send the position to that map site when clicked; nothing is sent until then.