Plot a course, degree by degree.

the bearing calculator

Calculate bearing and distance between two points

A bearing calculator online finds the direction and distance between any two points on Earth. Enter two sets of coordinates — or use your live location for one end — and this tool returns the initial bearing in degrees, the compass direction, and the great-circle distance in kilometres. It is the essential online compass math tool for navigation, route planning, surveying, and study.

The bearing is the angle measured clockwise from north to the direction you need to travel: 0° is north, 90° east, 180° south, 270° west. A route from London to New York, for example, starts with an initial bearing of about 288° — that is the compass direction you point the nose of a plane or the bow of a ship at the moment you set off.

Initial bearing vs final bearing

Because Earth is a sphere, the direction between two points is not a straight line on a map. The shortest route follows a great circle, and along that route the bearing changes continuously. The "initial bearing" is the direction at your starting point — the one you steer on first. On long routes the bearing drifts as you go, which is why pilots and navigators use waypoints and mid-course corrections. This calculator reports the initial bearing and also works out the final bearing for arriving end of the great-circle path.

For short trips — a hike, a drive across a city, a walk between two map points — the initial bearing is effectively the whole course. That makes this bearing calculator online perfect for everyday planning as well as classroom geometry.

Distance the way a navigator measures it

Alongside the bearing you get the great-circle distance — the shortest distance over Earth's surface between the two points, calculated with the haversine formula. Unlike a ruler on a flat map, this accounts for the planet's curvature, so the result matches real travel distances. It is the same calculation used for flight planning and maritime navigation.

The tool goes further than a plain calculator. Choose a destination from the preset list — including major world cities and the Kaaba in Mecca — and it computes the summary ("New York is 245° WSW from London, 5,570 km away") plus four extra readouts from point A: the Qibla direction, magnetic declination, andsun position. One entry, and you see how your compass, Qibla, and solar data line up with your route.

Use the bearing with a compass

The natural companion to this tool is theonline compass. Calculate your bearing, open the compass, and turn until your heading matches. Switch the compass to true north so your steering lines up with map north — and let the compass apply your location's declination automatically. The combination turns a number on a page into a course you can actually walk, sail, or drive.

This bearing calculator online is useful for route planning before a hike, aligning antennae and solar panels, estimating travel between two addresses, double-checking a compass course, or verifying homework. Because everything runs locally in your browser, it is a private, free online compass geometry tool you can trust anywhere — no installations, no accounts, no data collection.

Degrees, directions, and planning

Bearings read in degrees are precise but abstract; that is why the tool also converts them into plain compass directions. 45° becomes NE, 200° becomes SSW, and so on — so you can answer questions like "which way do I need to head?" in the same language a compass or map speaks. Enter your live position as point A and a destination as point B, and the whole picture — bearing, direction, distance, Qibla, declination, and sun — updates instantly. That is the power of an online compass math tool built around your actual coordinates.