About Travel Distance Calculator

Great-circle distance, bearing and midpoint between cities, airport codes or raw coordinates, plus a route and time estimate with stated assumptions. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Travel collection.

Use Cases

• Calculate driving time and distance between cities for road trip planning.
• Compare multiple routes between two destinations by total distance and estimated driving time.
• Estimate fuel cost for a trip using distance and vehicle fuel economy.
• Calculate commute distance when evaluating a potential new home location.

Tips

• Calculate driving distance separately from straight-line (as-the-crow-flies) distance — driving distances are typically 20–40% longer than straight-line for most routes.
• Account for border crossing wait times on international drives — they can add 1–4 hours to cross-border routes at busy crossings.
• For multi-stop trips, use the nearest-neighbor algorithm to find a reasonably efficient route order before optimizing further.

Fun Facts

• The driving distance from New York to Los Angeles (2,790 miles via I-40) would take approximately 41 hours of non-stop driving at highway speeds — but the same distance in a straight line is only 2,451 miles.
• The longest drivable distance within a single country is the Trans-Canada Highway from Victoria, BC to St. John's, NL at 7,821 km (4,860 miles).
• Google Maps launched its driving directions feature in 2007, three years after the service launched with maps-only navigation. It now processes over 1 billion kilometers of driving directions per day globally.

FAQ

How is driving time estimated?

Driving time = distance / average speed. Highway average including stops is typically 60–65 mph in the US. Add 15–20% for urban segments, mountain terrain, and border crossings. Real-world time is typically 10–15% over pure driving time estimates.

What is haversine distance vs. driving distance?

Haversine calculates the great-circle distance between two GPS coordinates (the shortest path on the Earth's surface). Driving distance follows road networks and is always longer. For most continental routes, driving distance is 15–40% longer than haversine.