Bearing & Compass Calculator
Find the compass direction (bearing) from any one place to another. Free tool. Returns initial, final, rhumb-line, and reverse bearings in five formats — three-figure (032°), 16-point compass (NNE), 32-point, surveyor quadrant (N32°E), and NATO mils — plus the magnetic bearing corrected for local magnetic declination from the BGS-hosted World Magnetic Model 2025.
Bearing math, with the magnetic correction your compass actually needs
Most online bearing calculators give you one number — usually the initial true bearing — and stop. That is fine for a math homework problem. It is not enough if you are reading a chart and trying to set a compass.
The compass on your wrist or in your hand does notpoint at true north. It points at the magnetic pole, which is currently somewhere in the Canadian Arctic and drifting toward Siberia at about 50 km a year. The angle between true and magnetic north — the magnetic declination — depends on where you are: about -12° (12° west) in New York, +1° in London, +12° in Anchorage, -8° in Tokyo. To convert a true bearing from a map into the magnetic bearing you actually steer: magnetic = true − declination. (East declination subtracts; west declination adds.)
We do that conversion for you. Drop a start point and the tool fetches the current WMM 2025 declination via the British Geological Survey, applies it, and shows the magnetic bearing alongside the true bearing on the compass rose. The dashed grey arrow on the rose is the magnetic bearing; the solid red arrow is the true bearing. Same destination, two different numbers — and on a real compass, the dashed-grey one is what you actually dial.
How to find the bearing between two points
Five steps. Maps, search, and GPS all work.
- Pick the start point. Tap "Use My Location" to read your GPS, type a city or address into the From search box, or click directly on the world map. The first map click sets the start point (green pin).
- Pick the destination. Type a destination into the To search box or tap the map a second time. The destination shows as a red pin and the great-circle path is drawn between the two as a solid red line; the rhumb line (constant compass course) appears as a dashed grey line.
- Read the compass rose and bearing cards. The compass rose shows true north up, with a red arrow pointing in the direction of travel. The four format cards show the same bearing as a 3-figure number (032°), a 16-point compass label (NNE), a surveyor quadrant (N32°E), and NATO mils. Distance is shown in kilometres, miles, and nautical miles.
- Apply the magnetic correction (if you are using a real compass). A real magnetic compass does not point at true north — it points at the magnetic pole, which is offset by the local magnetic declination. The tool fetches the current declination at your start point from the BGS-hosted World Magnetic Model 2025, and shows you the magnetic bearing (= true bearing − declination). On the rose, the magnetic bearing arrow appears in dashed grey alongside the red true-bearing arrow.
- Switch directions or pick a new pair. Use Swap to flip the start and destination, Clear to reset, or pick one of the quick examples (NYC → London, SF → Tokyo, London → Sydney, Cairo → Cape Town, Reykjavik → Anchorage) to see how great-circle and rhumb-line bearings diverge over long distances.
The four kinds of bearing — and when to use each
"Bearing" is one word for several different geometric things. The differences matter, especially over long distances.
What: The compass direction at the start point. The bearing changes as you travel a great-circle route.
When: Long-distance flight planning, transoceanic shipping, ICBM trajectories, anything where you need the "shortest path" direction.
What: The compass direction at the destination — i.e., the direction you are heading when you arrive. Differs from initial bearing for long routes.
When: Reverse navigation, "where will I be heading when I land?" calculations, cross-checking long-distance routing.
What: A constant compass bearing that does not change along the route. Equal-angle path on a Mercator chart.
When: Maritime sailing under hand-steering, simple flight planning over short distances, any route where holding a constant heading is easier than continuously updating one.
What: Initial bearing + 180° — the direction back to the start from anywhere along the route.
When: Hiking ("back-bearing to camp"), search and rescue ("from your last known direction, walk back along the reverse bearing"), surveying.
What people use this tool for
Seven common patterns we see in the analytics.
Hiking, orienteering, and backcountry compass navigation
Set your trail map points (camp, summit, water source, trailhead) into the calculator and read the magnetic bearing — the number you actually dial into a baseplate compass. The tool corrects for local magnetic declination so you do not have to look up a separate NOAA chart. Particularly useful for through-hikers planning a 7-day route across multiple declination zones (the AT crosses ~5° of declination from Georgia to Maine; the PCT crosses ~10° from Mexico to Canada).
Sailing and small-craft maritime navigation
Maritime charts use 3-figure bearings (032°) and nautical miles. The tool gives you both, plus a "course-to-steer" magnetic bearing once you account for compass deviation (which is vessel-specific and not part of WMM). Rhumb-line bearings are particularly relevant in sailing — a constant compass course is easier to hold than chasing a great-circle over hours of helm changes. The dashed line on the map shows you exactly that course.
Aviation flight planning — VOR radials and outbound courses
Pilots use bearings constantly: setting a VOR OBS course, planning an outbound radial from a navaid, or laying out a heading in flight planning. The tool gives you 3-figure bearings (the standard aviation format) plus magnetic for charts that show magnetic radials. Note: aviation routes typically use rhumb-line ("loxodrome") bearings for short legs and great-circle for long-distance international routes.
Surveying and land descriptions
Property deeds and surveying notes use quadrant bearings ("N 32° 14′ E"). The tool produces quadrant bearings to one decimal place. For high-precision land surveying you would want a geodetic-ellipsoid bearing rather than spherical, but for general property-line layout and rough surveys the spherical bearings are within tens of metres on legal-sized parcels.
Antenna pointing — satellite dishes, ham radio, and Wi-Fi
Pointing a directional antenna at a satellite or distant repeater requires both azimuth (bearing) and elevation. The bearing portion is what this tool computes. Use the magnetic bearing if you are aligning by hand-compass; use the true bearing if you are aligning against a sun-shadow at noon or a polar star. Useful for: home satellite-TV dish setups, Starlink antennas in fixed installations, ham-radio Yagi pointing, point-to-point Wi-Fi bridges.
Solar panel orientation, sundials, and solar architecture
Solar panels in the northern hemisphere typically point true south for maximum annual yield (panels in the southern hemisphere point true north). A magnetic compass alone gives you magnetic south, which is offset by the local declination (e.g., 12° west in NYC). Use the tool to compute the true bearing to your target (true north / true south), then convert via the displayed declination for compass alignment.
Real estate and architectural orientation
Listings often describe orientation as "south-facing" or "the porch faces NNE". Use the bearing tool to compute the exact compass direction the front door, balcony, or main window faces, given the property’s lat/lng and a reference point in the direction of view. The 16-point compass output (NNE, ESE, etc.) matches the language used in MLS listings.
Compass formats — every way a bearing can be written
Different industries use different bearing notations. The tool surfaces the five most common; the table below shows the conversions and contexts.
| Format | Example | Range / step | Primary use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three-figure bearing | 032° / 195° | 000°–359° | Aviation, maritime, military — the international standard. Always 3 digits, zero-padded. |
| 16-point compass | N, NNE, NE, ENE, E… | 16 points × 22.5° | Weather reports, casual navigation, MLS listings, general English language. |
| 32-point compass | NbE, NEbN, ENE, EbN… | 32 points × 11.25° | Traditional maritime — "boxing the compass". Largely historical now. |
| Quadrant bearing | N32°E, S15°W | 0°–90° in 4 quadrants | Land surveying, property deeds, US legal descriptions of boundaries. |
| Mils (NATO) | 569 mils, 3,200 mils | 0–6,400 mils | Military artillery, mortar, rifle scope reticles. 6,400 mils = 360°. |
| Decimal degrees | 32.42°, 195.83° | 0°–360° (or -180°–+180°) | Math, software, data files. Precision without the symbols. |
The mathematics behind the result
Every figure in the result panel is derived from a small set of well-known formulas in spherical trigonometry. They are below, in case you want to verify or implement them yourself.
| Quantity | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Initial bearing (forward azimuth) | θ = atan2(sin Δλ · cos φ₂, cos φ₁ · sin φ₂ − sin φ₁ · cos φ₂ · cos Δλ) | Result in radians; convert to degrees and normalise to 0–360°. |
| Final bearing | (forwardBearing(B → A) + 180°) mod 360° | Equivalent to: at B, where would you have come from? Then reverse it. |
| Rhumb-line bearing | θ = atan2(Δλ, Δψ), Δψ = ln(tan(π/4 + φ₂/2) / tan(π/4 + φ₁/2)) | Mercator-projection straight line. Constant heading. Adjust Δλ for ±180° wrap. |
| Distance (great-circle, haversine) | d = 2R · asin(√(sin²(Δφ/2) + cos φ₁ · cos φ₂ · sin²(Δλ/2))) | R = 6,371 km (mean spherical Earth). Accurate to ~0.5% vs. WGS-84 ellipsoid. |
| Magnetic bearing | magneticBearing = trueBearing − magneticDeclination | Declination is +ve east of true north. East declination subtracts; west adds. |
How the tool actually works
1. Bearing math
We treat Earth as a sphere of radius 6,371 km (the IUGG mean radius) and use the standard spherical-trigonometry formulas above. The math runs entirely in the browser; no server round-trip is needed for the bearing or the distance.
2. Distance math
We use the haversine formula. Compared to the law-of-cosines version, haversine is numerically stable for very small distances (down to centimetres) and avoids floating-point rounding errors near antipodes.
3. Map line drawing
The great-circle line is computed by SLERP (spherical linear interpolation) on the unit sphere — 96 intermediate points that get rendered as a polyline on the MapLibre vector tile basemap. When the path crosses the 180° meridian, we split it into two segments so the line draws cleanly without wrapping all the way around the world.
4. Magnetic declination (BGS WMM 2025)
We call our own server-side proxy of the BGS-hosted WMM 2025 web service. The proxy caches responses for 24 hours per coordinate (declination changes by less than 1° per year, so a 24-hour cache is fine). The WMM 2025 model is jointly published by the US NCEI and the UK Defence Geographic Centre; it is the same model used by NATO, the IHO, ICAO, and most official navigation systems.
5. Place name labels
We call OpenStreetMap Nominatim once per pin to label the location with a human-readable name. The labels appear under the From / To headers and below the coordinate cards.
SimpleMapLab vs other bearing calculators
Honest comparison with the major free bearing tools online. Each tool wins different scenarios — the table is a feature checklist, not a value judgement.
| Feature | SimpleMapLab | movable-type.co.uk | fcc.gov bearing | geomidpoint.com | Geocoding APIs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free, no sign-up | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Limited / paid |
| Initial + final + rhumb + reverse bearings | ✓ | Initial only | Initial only | Limited | API only |
| Magnetic bearing (with WMM declination) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Limited | ✓ (paid) |
| Visual compass rose | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| 4 compass formats (3-fig, 16-pt, quadrant, mils) | ✓ | 1–2 only | 1–2 only | Limited | API only |
| Distance in km, mi, and nautical miles | ✓ | km/mi only | mi only | km only | API only |
| Map with great-circle + rhumb path | ✓ | Limited | Single line | ✗ | ✗ |
| GPS button | ✓ | Limited | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Quick example pairs | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mobile-first interface | ✓ | Partial | ✓ | Desktop-first | ✗ |
| No watermark, no rate limit | ✓ | Some ads | Heavy ads | Heavy ads | API key required |
Magnetic declination — why your compass lies
Earth has two norths: the geographic North Pole (the point the planet rotates around) and the magnetic north pole (the wandering location toward which a compass needle points). The two are notthe same place. The geographic pole is fixed at 90° N; the magnetic pole is currently in the Canadian Arctic at roughly 86° N, 145° W and is moving toward Siberia at about 50 km per year.
The angle between true north and magnetic north — the declination — depends on where you are on Earth. In the eastern United States declination is roughly -12° to -16° (12° to 16° west); in the western United States it is +8° to +14° (east). In central Europe it is +1° to +3°. In the Pacific Ocean it can swing by ±20° within a few hundred kilometres. At extreme latitudes near the magnetic pole, declination can be anything — including 90° or more.
The World Magnetic Model is the standard reference. It is jointly produced by the US National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the UK Defence Geographic Centre, and is updated every five years. WMM 2025 is the current edition (covering January 2025 through December 2029). The tool calls the BGS-hosted web-service implementation of WMM 2025; same model, same coefficients, no API key needed.
The conversion is simple: magnetic bearing = true bearing − declination (with east declination positive). If declination is +10° east and the true bearing is 040°, the magnetic bearing is 040° − 10° = 030°. If declination is -12° west and the true bearing is 090°, the magnetic bearing is 090° − (-12°) = 102°.
Related tools and resources
For straight-line distance only (no bearing): Distance Between Two Places. For the geographic midpoint between two locations: Halfway Between Two Places. For the antipode (the bearing point you cannot reach — it is on the other side of Earth): Antipode Finder. For the GPS coordinates of a place: Latitude & Longitude Finder. For converting between coordinate formats: GPS Coordinate Converter. For elevation at a point: Elevation Finder. For time zone at a point: Time Zone Finder. For finding what country a point is in: What Country Am I In?.
Frequently asked questions
Bearing math: standard spherical-trigonometry formulas (forward azimuth via atan2, rhumb line via Mercator-projection straight line). Distance: haversine formula with mean spherical-Earth radius 6,371 km (IUGG mean). Great-circle path: SLERP (spherical linear interpolation) on the unit sphere with antimeridian splitting. Magnetic declination: World Magnetic Model 2025, jointly produced by US NCEI and the UK Defence Geographic Centre, accessed via the British Geological Survey’s public web service. Map basemap: OpenFreeMap Liberty vector tiles. Place names: OpenStreetMap Nominatimreverse-geocoder. All math runs client-side; the declination request is proxied through our server (cached 24h) so we do not leak the user’s coordinates to the BGS endpoint with origin headers.
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