Distance & Bearing

What it's for

Measure between two places, and find a place from another. It gives the distance between two positions, the compass bearing from one to the other and the halfway point, and it can project a waypoint: the position a given distance away on a given bearing.

For example, when a geocache says “from the bench, walk 250 m on a bearing of 45°”, put the bench’s position in point A, 45 and 250 below it, and go to the waypoint.

How to use it

Type positions in any form the Coordinate Converter reads: decimal degrees, degrees and minutes, grid references, Plus Codes or map links, for example. With point A and point B, you get the distance in kilometres, miles, nautical miles and metres, the bearing from A to B, the bearing you’d be travelling on when you arrive, the bearing back from B, and the halfway point.

To project a waypoint, give point A, a bearing in degrees (0 is north, 90 east) and a distance, and choose the unit (remembered in this browser). Each result has a Copy button, and the waypoint has links to open it in a map.

Example

Point A:

N 51° 30.044 W 000° 07.478

Point B:

N 51° 31.164 W 000° 07.620

The distance is 2.083 km (1.295 miles), the bearing from A to B is 355.5° (N), and the halfway point is N 51° 30.604 W 000° 07.549. With a bearing of 45 and a distance of 250 metres, the waypoint is N 51° 30.139 W 000° 07.325.

Good to know

Distances are on the Earth’s true, slightly flattened shape (the WGS84 ellipsoid, by Vincenty’s formulae), good to well under a millimetre, along the shortest path over the ground, not by road. For two points almost opposite each other on the globe, it falls back to a sphere, good to about 0.5%, and says so.

Bearings are from true north, not magnetic north: a compass points a few degrees away from true north in most places, and the difference changes from year to year. Over long distances the bearing changes along the way, which is why the arriving bearing differs from the starting one.