Distance Between Two Cities Calculator

Calculate distance between any two cities instantly. Get km, miles, and estimated travel time with our free distance calculator. Works worldwide.

SnapDistance helps you calculate the straight-line distance between two locations anywhere in the world. Every result includes kilometers, miles, nautical miles, estimated flight time, estimated driving time, and timezone context.

The calculator uses the Haversine formula to measure great-circle distance, which is the shortest path over the Earth's surface. This makes the tool useful for travel research, route comparison, logistics planning, education, and general curiosity.

You can also explore popular route pages, browse all distances from major cities, and review country-level route hubs to discover more destinations and related travel guides.

Quick answer: how far is it between two cities?

The distance between two cities is the great-circle distance between their coordinates — the shortest path across the surface of the Earth. SnapDistance computes it with the Haversine formula and returns kilometres, miles and nautical miles, plus an estimated flight time (distance divided by 800 km/h, plus 30 minutes) and, where a road link exists, an estimated driving time.

Example: New York to London is 5,570 km (3,461 miles), about 7h 28min in the air. The table below lists the most searched city pairs on SnapDistance.

Straight-line distance and estimated flight time for the most searched city pairs on SnapDistance.
RouteKilometresMilesFlight time
New York to London 5,570 km 3,461 mi ~7h 28min
London to Paris 344 km 214 mi ~56 min
New York to Los Angeles 3,936 km 2,446 mi ~5h 25min
Los Angeles to Tokyo 8,819 km 5,480 mi ~11h 31min
Tokyo to Osaka 392 km 244 mi ~59 min
Hong Kong to Shanghai 1,227 km 762 mi ~2h 2min
Paris to Rome 1,105 km 687 mi ~1h 53min
Delhi to Dubai 2,195 km 1,364 mi ~3h 15min
Berlin to Munich 504 km 313 mi ~1h 8min
Singapore to Manila 2,393 km 1,487 mi ~3h 29min
Cairo to London 3,511 km 2,182 mi ~4h 53min
Toronto to Vancouver 3,359 km 2,087 mi ~4h 42min
São Paulo to Buenos Aires 1,675 km 1,041 mi ~2h 36min
Tokyo to Kyoto 360 km 224 mi ~57 min

Straight-Line Distance vs Real-World Routing

Straight-line distance is the shortest possible separation between two locations. It is the same number you would draw with a ruler on a globe, ignoring roads, oceans, mountains, and political borders. For comparing two cities, two airports, or two coordinates, it is the most consistent and source-of-truth figure.

Real-world routing — the path a car, train, ship, or commercial flight actually follows — is almost always longer. Roads detour around terrain, flights follow air-traffic-control corridors and jet-stream-friendly tracks, and trains follow fixed rights-of-way. As a rule of thumb, driving routes are 1.2–1.5× the straight-line distance, and commercial flights are 1.02–1.10× the great-circle distance for routes longer than 1,000 km.

Knowing both numbers helps you frame a trip correctly: use straight-line distance to compare options at a glance, then switch to a routing service when you need exact door-to-door times.

Method & Limitations

SnapDistance reports great-circle distance — the shortest path over the surface of the Earth — and derives travel-time estimates from it. Here is exactly how each number is produced, and where it stops being reliable.

How the numbers are calculated

Known limitations

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is SnapDistance?

Distances are computed with the Haversine formula and city coordinates from OpenStreetMap, so the great-circle figure is accurate to within a few hundred metres for almost any city pair. Flight and driving time estimates are deliberate approximations — flight time uses a representative cruise speed and adds taxi/takeoff overhead, and driving time multiplies straight-line distance by 1.3 to approximate real road routing. Always confirm with a routing service before booking.

What is the difference between great-circle distance and driving distance?

Great-circle distance is the shortest path between two points along the surface of the Earth, treating the planet as a sphere. Driving distance follows actual roads, which add detours around terrain, water, and political borders. On most continents, the driving distance is roughly 1.2–1.5× the great-circle distance.

Is SnapDistance free to use?

Yes. The calculator, every city-hub page, every country page, the comparison tool, and all guides are free and require no account. There are no usage limits, no paywalls, and no ads.

Does SnapDistance store my searches?

No. All distance calculations run inside your browser, so the city pairs you enter are never sent to a SnapDistance server. The only data the site can see is anonymous Google Analytics traffic, and only if you accept the analytics cookie when you first visit.

Can I use SnapDistance offline?

Yes. SnapDistance is a Progressive Web App. Once you have visited the site, you can add it to your home screen on iOS or Android, or install it as a desktop app on Chrome and Edge. The cached pages and the calculator continue to work without an internet connection.

Recently Updated Routes

These city-to-city distance pages were refreshed in our latest update with new bearing, halfway-point, time-zone, and currency data.

Recently Updated City Hubs

Recently Updated Comparisons

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