Distance Between Two Places: How Far Apart Are Any Two Points on Earth?

How this tool works

Type two places (the tool suggests from a bundled list of 7,000+ world cities, and falls back to OpenStreetMap search for anything else, or accepts raw coordinates). The distance is the great-circle distance computed with the haversine formula on a spherical Earth of radius 6,371 km, which is accurate to within about 0.5% of the true ellipsoidal distance. The map shows the actual great-circle path, which on a flat map curves toward the poles.

What you can do with it

• Measure the distance between any two cities, airports, or coordinates
• See results in miles, kilometers, and nautical miles
• Get the initial compass bearing from one place to the other
• See why flight paths look curved on flat maps

Why use it

Driving directions cannot answer how far apart two places actually are, especially across oceans. The great-circle distance is the real answer, and seeing the curved path teaches something about map projections for free.

Data sources and methods

• Natural Earth populated places (city coordinates)
• OpenStreetMap Nominatim (fallback geocoding for place names not in the bundled city list)

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