Coordinates to State — Lat/Lng to US State
Paste any US latitude/longitude pair (or click the map) and get the state name, two-letter postal abbreviation, county, city, and ZIP code in one second. Non-US coordinates fall back to the equivalent first-level admin region. Free, no sign-up, no API key.
Coordinates to State is a focused reverse geocoder optimised for the United States. The state name and two-letter abbreviation are the headline output; the county, city, and ZIP appear as supporting fields. It is the right tool for tax / licensing questions, drone Part 107 record-keeping, voter and election work, real-estate territory assignment, and any other workflow that turns on "which state is that?". For non-US coordinates the same query returns the first-level admin region — Canadian provinces, Mexican estados, German Bundesländer, etc.
Accepts decimal degrees (e.g. 40.7128, -74.0060) or hemisphere-suffixed coordinates (40.7128 N 74.0060 W). You can also click anywhere on the map below.
Try an example:
How to use it
- Enter US coordinates or click the map. Paste a latitude/longitude pair — for US locations latitude is between roughly 18° and 72° N and longitude between -67° and -180° (Hawaii and the Aleutians push the longitude limits). Or click anywhere on the map.
- Hit Look up — or use your GPS. The Look-up button resolves the coordinate to a state. The "My location" button uses your browser GPS — useful if you are physically in the state you want identified. Result appears within a second.
- Read the state name, abbreviation, and county. The result card shows the state name as the headline with the two-letter postal abbreviation (CA, TX, NY, FL...). Below that: country (United States), county, nearest city, and ZIP code. For coordinates outside the US the tool falls back to the local first-level admin region.
- Pick an example for a sanity check. The chips include landmarks across multiple states and territories — Hollywood (California), the Alamo (Texas), Diamond Head (Hawaii), Denali (Alaska), the Capitol (District of Columbia) — to confirm the tool handles the edge cases.
What people use this tool for
State-level tax, licensing, and compliance lookups
A great many US legal questions — sales tax, license requirements, residency rules — depend on which state a coordinate sits in. The lookup turns lat/lng from a CRM, lead form, or asset-tracking system into a definitive state answer in one call.
Drone airspace and Part 107 record-keeping
FAA-registered drone operations log lat/lng. Identifying the state for each flight is useful for state-level airspace and privacy rules. The tool also returns the county, which matters for some local-government drone notification regimes.
Voter registration and political-geography research
Election districts, state-level ballot rules, and voter-roll cross-checks all need a state per coordinate. Paste lat/lng to get the state immediately; combine with the county and ZIP fields for precinct-level work.
Real-estate territory and MLS routing
Real-estate teams partition territories by state and county. Drop a lat/lng (from an aerial photo, address geocode, or pinned location) and confirm the territory assignment without leaving the tool.
School-district / unified-district disambiguation
School-district boundaries follow state and county lines. The tool gives you state + county; pair with a district-shapefile lookup for the next step. Useful for enrolment routing, busing optimisation, and grant-eligibility work.
Cross-state border verification
Some coordinates sit near state lines — Lake Tahoe (CA/NV), Kansas City (KS/MO), Texarkana (TX/AR). The tool snaps the coordinate to whichever state’s polygon actually contains it (OpenStreetMap admin-1), with the city field for context.
US state abbreviations — quick reference for common edge cases
The two-letter abbreviation column in the result card uses the USPS standard. Eight of the more frequently asked-about entries:
| Abbr | State | Capital | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | California | Sacramento | Largest state by population |
| TX | Texas | Austin | Largest contiguous state by area |
| FL | Florida | Tallahassee | Highest median age (43.0) |
| NY | New York | Albany | Capital is not New York City |
| AK | Alaska | Juneau | Largest state by area; capital not road-connected |
| HI | Hawaii | Honolulu | Only state not on the North American mainland |
| DC | District of Columbia | — | Not a state; federal district |
| PR | Puerto Rico | San Juan | US territory; OSM admin-1 returns "Puerto Rico" |
How state resolution works
The tool sends the latitude and longitude to Nominatim (OpenStreetMap’s reverse geocoder). Nominatim finds the smallest admin polygon that contains your point and walks up the admin hierarchy to admin level 1 — which in the US is the state. The state name is then mapped to its USPS two-letter abbreviation via a built-in lookup table covering all 50 states plus DC.
For coordinates inside Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, or the Northern Mariana Islands, OSM returns the territory name in the admin-1 field — the tool passes it through without a USPS abbreviation since those territories are not part of the 50-state abbreviation table.
Related US-geography tools
For your current state using GPS without typing coordinates: What State Am I In?. For just the city: Coordinates to City. For just the country (worldwide): Coordinates to Country. For the US county a coordinate falls inside: Address to County Lookup. For the full street address with elevation and time zone: Coordinates to Address.
Frequently asked questions
Reverse geocoding via Nominatim (OpenStreetMap Foundation, ODbL licence). State boundaries from OpenStreetMap admin level 1, sourced primarily from the US Census Bureau TIGER/Line shapefile contributions to OSM. State name → USPS two-letter abbreviation mapping is a built-in static table covering all 50 states plus DC. Map basemap: OpenFreeMap Liberty. No data leaves your browser beyond the Nominatim query.