Distance Between Coordinates Calculator

The haversine formula calculates the shortest path over the surface of a perfect sphere (as the crow flies). Driving distance follows roads, highways, and terrain, which is always longer. Use this for straight-line distance; use a mapping service for driving directions.

It uses 6,371 km, the widely accepted mean Earth radius. Since Earth is slightly flattened at the poles (oblate spheroid), this value introduces a small error of up to 0.3% for very long distances. For most practical purposes, this is more than accurate enough.

This calculator accepts decimal degrees only. To convert DMS to decimal: degrees + (minutes / 60) + (seconds / 3600). For example, 48 degrees 51 minutes 23 seconds = 48.8564 decimal degrees.

Yes. The haversine formula works for any pair of latitude/longitude coordinates, including across hemispheres, the international date line, and near the poles. Latitude must be between -90 and 90, longitude between -180 and 180.

For most distances, haversine is accurate to within 0.3% (about 1 km error per 300 km). For higher accuracy on very long distances, the Vincenty formula accounts for Earth being an oblate spheroid, but haversine is sufficient for the vast majority of applications.

The haversine formula calculates the shortest distance between two points on a sphere given their latitude and longitude. It works in three steps:

(1) compute the central angle using a = sin^2(dlat/2) + cos(lat1) x cos(lat2) x sin^2(dlon/2).

(2) find the angular distance c = 2 x atan2(sqrt(a), sqrt(1-a)).

(3) multiply by Earth radius d = 6,371 x c to get distance in km. The name "haversine" comes from "half versed sine", a trigonometric function. It is preferred over simpler formulas because it remains numerically stable for small distances.

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