SamCalculator

Map Distance Calculator

Measure the straight-line distance along a multi-stop route.

Distance on Map

Click the map below to set two points on the map and find the shortest distance (great circle / air distance) between them. Once created, the markers can be repositioned by clicking and holding, then dragging them.

Loading map…

Click the map to drop the first point.

What does a map distance calculator do?

A map distance calculator measures the straight-line surface distance along a polyline of waypoints. You drop two or more points on a world map, and the tool sums the great-circle distance between every consecutive pair to give the total route length. Each individual leg is also reported with its length and compass bearing so you can see how the journey breaks down.

Unlike a road-routing service that follows a road network, a map distance calculator gives you the as-the-crow-flies length of a multi-stop trip. It is the right tool for hiking the line-of-sight between summits, planning a sailing route, comparing the geographic spread of office locations, or sanity-checking the perimeter of a region. For door-to-door driving distances, use a road-routing service in addition.

How the map tool works

Place waypoints

Click the map to add up to 10 waypoints, or paste latitude/longitude pairs into the coordinate list. Drag any point to fine-tune its position.

Read totals and per-leg breakdown

The result card shows the total straight-line distance, the per-leg distance and bearing, and rough travel-time estimates by walking, cycling, driving, and flight speeds.

Switch units

Toggle between km, miles, and nautical miles; every leg and the total update in place.

Share or export

Copy the waypoint list as tab-separated lat/lon values, or share the route via URL — every waypoint is encoded in the link.

Formulas inside this tool

Per-leg distance

dᵢ = Haversine(Pᵢ, Pᵢ₊₁)

Each leg uses the same Haversine formula as the lat/lng tab.

Total distance

D = Σ dᵢ

The straight-line route length is the sum of the leg distances.

Per-leg bearing

θᵢ = atan2(sin Δλ · cos φ₂, cos φ₁ · sin φ₂ − sin φ₁ · cos φ₂ · cos Δλ)

The initial bearing of each leg, measured clockwise from north.

Travel-time estimate

t = D / v

Default speeds: walk 5 km/h, cycle 18 km/h, car 90 km/h, flight 800 km/h.

Real-world uses

Hiking and trekking

Estimate cross-country distance between summits or campsites before consulting a topo map for elevation profile.

Sailing and aviation

Plan the geographic legs of a multi-stop trip and read the bearings to set on the compass.

Field operations

Compute the rough distance between sample sites, sensors, or telecom towers for logistics planning.

Sport and racing

Measure the closed-loop distance of a course or relay leg from a GPS trace.

Why use this calculator?

Summing Haversine distances along a polyline is straightforward in theory but tedious to do for many legs by hand. The map view makes it natural to position waypoints visually instead of typing every pair, and the per-leg table makes it easy to spot the dominant section of the route — useful when the goal is not just total distance but also where the time will be spent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Each point you place on the map has a latitude and longitude. The calculator strings the points together as a polyline and applies the Haversine formula to each consecutive pair, then adds the leg distances to produce the total route length.

No — it measures straight-line (great-circle) distance along the surface of the Earth, not road distance. A road network detours around terrain and obstacles, so actual driving distance is almost always longer than the value reported here.

Up to 10 waypoints. That is plenty for typical multi-stop routes — and keeps the map readable. Each leg's distance and bearing is shown in the per-leg table.

From the total straight-line distance, the calculator applies typical sustained speeds: 5 km/h walking, 18 km/h cycling, 90 km/h driving, and 800 km/h flying. These are first-order estimates only — real journeys will vary by terrain, traffic, weather, and stops.

Yes. Click any point and drag it; the leg lengths, total distance, and bearing values update instantly. You can also remove a waypoint by clicking the × on its row in the coordinate list.

Over short distances a straight line on the equirectangular SVG map is visually almost identical to the great-circle arc, so the lines stay clean. The math behind every leg always uses the curved great-circle Haversine distance, regardless of the visual rendering.

Switch between kilometres, statute miles, and nautical miles at the top of the tab. Per-leg distances and the total update simultaneously, and the bearing is always reported in degrees clockwise from north.

Yes. Use the Share button at the bottom of the result section — the URL encodes your waypoints so anyone opening the link sees the same route on their map.

Each leg uses Haversine, accurate to within about 0.5% of the true geodesic distance on the WGS-84 ellipsoid. Summing many short legs accumulates rounding errors slowly, so even a 10-leg route will be within a few hundred metres of the surveyor-grade value.

Yes. Use the Copy button in the result actions row — it copies a tab-separated list of every waypoint's latitude and longitude, ready to paste into a spreadsheet, KML file, or GPS device.

Related Calculators

More coordinate-geometry, trig, and unit tools that pair with distance calculations.