Coordinate Converter

A dropped minus sign changes New York's longitude from west of Greenwich to east of it. Swapping 40.7128 and -74.0060 is just as disruptive. Before calculating anything, read the pair as latitude first and longitude second.

Read the pair before converting it

Geographic coordinates identify a point on Earth using two angles. Latitude runs from -90° to +90° and measures north or south of the Equator. Longitude runs from -180° to +180° and measures east or west of the Greenwich meridian. North and east use positive values; south and west use negative ones.

• 40.7128, -74.0060 means latitude 40.7128 north and longitude 74.0060 west.
• A comma or a full stop may be used as the decimal separator in this tool.
• Thousands separators do not belong in latitude or longitude fields.

From a map pin to usable numbers

To find coordinates, right-click a point in a desktop map or long-press it on a phone. Copy the decimal pair shown by the map. The calculator does not request live-location permission and does not infer an address; it works only with the numbers entered. Extra decimal places describe how the value is written, not the guaranteed accuracy of the phone's GPS fix.

From the numbers back to a map

Paste 40.7128, -74.0060 into a map search field to open the corresponding point. If the pin appears on the wrong continent, inspect the order and signs before changing the values. The Google Maps link opens directions between the two points. Any route shown there is separate from the distance calculated on this page.

Use DD or DMS without changing the location

Decimal degrees, abbreviated DD, write latitude or longitude as one decimal number. Degrees, minutes and seconds split the same angle into parts, such as 40° 42' 46.08" N. The coordinate converter works in both directions, but does not transform UTM grids or change the source datum. In DMS input, degrees and minutes must be whole numbers, while minutes and seconds must remain below 60. At exactly 90° latitude or 180° longitude, both smaller parts must be zero.

Direction and sign carry the same information. When South or West is selected in the GPS coordinate converter, enter a non-negative degree value; the direction applies the minus sign. A round trip from DD to DMS and back should return the same point, apart from the small rounding used for seconds.

What the distance result includes

The distance tab applies the Haversine formula to two coordinate pairs. It reports kilometres, metres, miles and nautical miles along with the initial bearing. This is an approximate great-circle surface distance based on a sphere with a radius of 6,371 km. It does not follow roads, trails or elevation changes. Bearings are measured from true north, not magnetic north. A dash replaces the bearing at a starting pole or for exact antipodes, where there is no unique initial direction.

The map line connects the markers; it is not a plotted great-circle route. Displaying the map requests Leaflet code from a CDN and background tiles from OpenStreetMap. These requests need a network connection.

Use the number as an air-line comparison, not as an arrival estimate. A driving route can be much longer. Land surveys and safety-critical navigation also require suitable reference data and equipment; a phone fix or manually placed map pin may be offset by its reception and source datum.