About DistanceFrom.co

Our Mission

We believe travel planning should be simple, fast, and free. Whether you're planning a road trip, considering a flight, or just curious about how far apart two cities are, we provide the information you need to make informed decisions — all in one place, without cluttered ads or paywalled features.

How We Calculate

Straight-Line Distances

We use the Haversine formula, a well-established mathematical method that accounts for Earth's curvature. This provides accuracy within 0.5% for any two points on the globe. The Haversine formula calculates the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere, making it ideal for geographic distance calculations.

Driving Distances & Times

For popular routes, we use real road data from OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine), an open-source routing engine that uses OpenStreetMap road data. These routes are pre-computed and represent actual road distances and driving times.

For less common city pairs, we estimate driving distances using road factor coefficients based on the type of route (urban, highway, long-distance). These estimates are clearly labeled as "estimated" on the page to maintain transparency.

Flight Time Estimates

Flight times are estimated based on an average commercial aircraft cruise speed of 800 km/h (500 mph), with an additional 30 minutes added for takeoff, landing, and taxiing procedures. For very short distances (under 200 km), we note that direct flights may not be available.

Fuel Cost Estimates

Fuel costs are calculated using regional average fuel prices and an assumed fuel consumption of 8L/100km (approximately 29 MPG), typical of a mid-size sedan. These are rough estimates intended to give you a general idea of trip costs. See our Disclaimer for important limitations.

Data Sources & Methodology

We believe in transparency. All our data comes from reputable, open-source projects:

• GeoNames — A comprehensive geographical database containing over 11 million place names. We use this for city coordinates, population data, timezone information, and elevation data.
• OpenStreetMap (OSM) — A collaborative mapping project that provides the road network data powering our driving route calculations. OSM is maintained by a global community of mappers.
• OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine) — An open-source routing engine built on OpenStreetMap data. We pre-compute driving distances and times for popular routes using OSRM's high-quality routing algorithms.

Where we use estimated data rather than verified data, we clearly label this on the page. We update our datasets periodically to maintain accuracy.