Global Distance Calculator
Distance Between Cities
Find the distance between any two places worldwide. Get instant results in kilometers, miles and nautical miles.
Calculate your distance
Choose two places to get started.
Why Is the Driving Distance Longer?
See how roads, terrain and highways change the distance between two cities.
Demonstration example from our approved route data
New York Chicago
+138 km · 12.0% Road Detour
The road takes a longer route
New York and Chicago are 1,144 km apart in a straight line. The approved driving route is 1,282 km, following the interstate highway network.
Driving time is modeled and excludes live traffic and stops.
More Ways to Explore Distance
Go beyond a single calculation.
Before you plan
One trip, three different distances
Ask how far it is from New York to London and there are several honest answers. The straight-line distance across the curved Earth is about 5,570 km (3,461 mi). That is the shortest path the planet allows, and it is the figure every result on SnapDistance starts with.
A road distance answers a different question: how far the actual roads, bridges and tunnels take you. A flight time answers a third: how long an aircraft spends in the air between two specific airports. They rarely match, and mixing them up is the most common planning mistake.
That is why the calculator keeps them apart. You see the straight line first, a driving figure only when a checked road route exists, and a flight estimate when you pick airports in the Flight Time Calculator. If you want to understand the gap in more depth, our guide on flight distance vs driving distance walks through real examples.
On the road
How much longer is the drive than the map line?
There is no fixed multiplier. Terrain, coastlines and the way a country built its motorways decide the detour. Here are five routes with a checked road route, from the most direct to the most winding:
The flatter and more open the land, the closer the road stays to the straight line. Mountains and bays push it out. A useful habit: before you trust a rough guess, look up the real route, or put two trips next to each other with Compare Routes. Our guide to driving vs straight-line distance explains why, and how far you can drive in one day turns kilometres into a realistic daily plan.
Where the road stops
When the route has to cross water
London and Paris are only 344 km apart in a straight line, but no road connects them. A driver covers about 404 km on roads and then spends about 59 km on the Channel Tunnel vehicle shuttle between Folkestone and Calais, where the car rides on a train.
We count those two parts separately. Adding the train to the driving total would make the drive look longer than it is, and hiding it would suggest you could simply keep driving. See the full breakdown on the London to Paris page.
The same honesty applies everywhere: if a route needs a ferry or has no road connection at all, the result says so instead of inventing a number. For islands and far-apart continents, the interactive map shows why the straight line is the only distance that makes sense.
In the air
Why flight paths look curved on a flat map
The Earth is round, so the shortest path between two cities is part of a circle around the globe. On a flat map that line bows towards the nearest pole. A flight from Europe to the west coast of North America heads north over Greenland, even though it looks like a detour on paper.
The effect is strongest on long east–west trips at high latitudes and almost disappears on north–south ones. Tokyo to Sydney (7,826 km) runs nearly straight down the map, while New York to Los Angeles (3,936 km) arcs gently north. You can see both shapes on the map.
At the extreme end, Singapore and New York are about 15,340 km apart, close to the limit of today's aircraft. The longest flights in the world and Project Sunrise pages look at what it takes to fly that far nonstop. The maths behind every figure is explained in plain language in what is the Haversine formula?
Turning numbers into plans
What does a distance actually mean for your trip?
A number on its own does not tell you whether a trip is a day out or a two-day drive. These guides answer the questions travellers ask most once they have the figure.
Explore Popular Distances
Start with some of the world's most familiar routes.
How Does the Distance Calculator Work?
SnapDistance calculates the great-circle distance between two geographic points using the Haversine formula. Results are shown in kilometers, miles and nautical miles.
For selected routes, we also display approved driving distances and modeled driving times. Flight-time estimates are available when you choose specific airports.
Read our methodologyFrequently Asked Questions
▸How accurate is the distance calculator?
SnapDistance uses the Haversine formula on a spherical Earth model with a radius of 6,371 km. Results are typically within 0.5% of more complex geodesic calculations — more than accurate enough for travel planning, route comparison and general distance questions between any two places.
▸What is the difference between straight-line and driving distance?
Straight-line (great-circle) distance is the shortest path over Earth's surface. Driving distance follows actual roads and is always longer. SnapDistance shows driving distance and modeled driving time only for routes with verified route data — never a guessed estimate.
▸Can I calculate distances between places worldwide?
Yes. The search covers SnapDistance's curated city database plus a local GeoNames dataset of around 70,000 towns and cities with 5,000 or more inhabitants. Every calculation runs instantly in your browser, with results in kilometers, miles and nautical miles.
▸Can I estimate flight time?
Yes. Pick a departure and arrival airport in the flight time calculator, and SnapDistance shows a modeled flight time based on an average cruising speed of 800 km/h plus 30 minutes for takeoff and landing. It is a planning estimate, not an airline schedule.