Distance models compared
Different definitions answer different questions. The differences become visible on long or high-latitude routes.
| Model | Distance | Difference vs headline | Meaning |
|---|
OneFreePlace · Tool #135
Measure two coordinates with four different definitions of distance.
Get WGS84 ellipsoidal geodesic distance, spherical Haversine, constant-bearing rhumb line and altitude-aware 3D chord—plus initial/final bearings, midpoint, DMS conversion and local ENU offsets. Paste decimal or DMS coordinates and keep every assumption visible.
✓ WGS84 Vincenty✓ Haversine + rhumb line
✓ Bearings + midpoint✓ Altitude-aware chord
✓ DMS parser + exports
Distance Between Coordinates Calculator
WGS84 · sphere · rhumb · chord · bearings · midpoint
Coordinate pair
Paste coordinates or edit latitude and longitude directly.
Point A · origin—
Point B · destination—
Decimal fields accept decimal commas. Paste boxes accept “lat, lon”, “lat; lon”, whitespace-separated decimal pairs, or latitude/longitude DMS with N/S/E/W.
Surface geodesic
Calculating—
WGS84 ellipsoidal distance
Enter two valid coordinates.
Kilometres—surface geodesic
Miles—statute miles
Nautical miles—1 nmi = 1852 m
Initial bearing——
Final bearing——
Height difference—B altitude − A altitude
Navigation geometry
Useful companion values for mapping, aviation, marine, GIS and engineering checks.
Coordinate formats
The same two locations in decimal degrees and DMS. No datum transformation is performed; inputs are interpreted as WGS84 latitude/longitude.
Local ENU / 3D diagnostics
ECEF chord and East-North-Up are straight-line 3D quantities. ENU is most intuitive for short baselines; over continental distances it is a tangent-frame diagnostic, not a surface route.
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Near-antipodal pairs are explicitly flagged.Vincenty’s inverse method can fail to converge for points close to opposite sides of Earth. When that happens, this standalone tool switches the headline to a stable spherical Haversine fallback and labels the fallback visibly instead of silently returning a bad ellipsoidal answer.