Distance Calculator
Great-circle distance between cities worldwide
Choose a city to start from and a city to finish at, and you'll get the distance between them in both kilometres and miles. The figure is the great-circle distance — the shortest line across the curved surface of the globe, which is roughly the path an aircraft follows rather than the wandering route a car takes by road. Hundreds of cities across every continent are built in, so most journeys you can think of are a couple of clicks away.
Enter Two Locations
Distance
Travel Time Estimates
Estimates based on great-circle distance at typical speeds. Actual travel times vary.
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"As the crow flies" versus the road
There are two honest answers to "how far is it?", and they can differ by a surprising amount. The great-circle distance is the straight line over the Earth's curved surface. The driving distance follows real roads, which bend around coastlines, mountains and borders and are always longer. London to Rome is about 1,430 km in a straight line, but nearer 1,870 km if you drive it — roughly 30% further. As a rule, the longer and more mountainous the trip, the wider that gap grows.
This is also why a flight path drawn on a flat map looks like a curve rather than a straight line. The shortest route from London to Los Angeles arcs up over Greenland and northern Canada, which seems perverse on a rectangular map but is genuinely the most direct way across a sphere.
A quick flight-time estimate. Divide the distance in kilometres by about 800 — a typical cruising speed — and add most of an hour for taxiing, take-off and landing. London to New York, around 5,570 km, comes out at roughly seven to eight hours that way, which is about what the timetables show. Strong headwinds or a longer routing to dodge bad weather will push it up from there.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What is great-circle distance? ▼
Great-circle distance is the shortest possible path between two points on the surface of a sphere (the Earth). It's the straight-line distance "as the crow flies", which is shorter than the actual road or flight distance, which must follow routes and avoid obstacles.
How accurate is the distance calculation? ▼
The calculator uses the Haversine formula with precise latitude/longitude coordinates for each city, giving results accurate to within a few kilometres. It assumes the Earth is a sphere (radius 6,371 km), which introduces a maximum error of about 0.5%.
Does the calculator show driving distance? ▼
No — it shows the straight-line (as the crow flies) distance. Driving or travel distance will always be longer due to roads, terrain, and borders. For driving distances use a mapping service like Google Maps.
How do I find the distance between two countries? ▼
Select the capital city (or largest city) of each country from the dropdowns. The result gives a good approximation of the distance between the two countries' main population centres.
What units does the calculator use? ▼
Results are displayed simultaneously in kilometres (km) and miles (mi). The kilometre figure is the primary calculation; miles are derived by multiplying by 0.621371.
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