Elevation Generation
Back when I first landed in Cusco, my phone showed one number and a friend’s watch showed another, and both were technically right. it is the ground height above mean sea level, but whatever the device reports depends on its sensor’s reference surface. That small difference catches hikers, pilots, and runners off guard, since altitude and elevation are swapped in everyday use. When you tap the map or press Share exact location, the value you see comes from a terrain model, not from your boots.
I treat any readings as a rough guide, because GPS is weak vertically and the barometer drifts with weather. A DEM built from SRTM or similar satellite data gives a stable repeatable figure for exact coordinates, which is why many map tools lean on it. Even so, it is not survey-grade, and steep terrain or polar regions can push the error from a few meters toward tens of meters. This page does not store your coordinates and there is no account to create, so you can search an address freely. Only your Feet or Meters choice is remembered in your browser.
What is My Elevation?
Ground elevation above sea level
Reported by your phone’s sensors. It can differ from ground because it uses a different reference.
Smaller is better.
How reliable the device altitude is. Many browsers do not provide this.
Terrain model lookup.
Ground height comes from a digital terrain model and is usually within a few meters on flat land. It is not survey-grade and should not be used for engineering, flood or aviation decisions.
Taken from your device clock.
Shown when your device reports movement.
Shown while moving. Tap below to use the compass.
Distance travelled since you opened this page.
Going up, down, or staying level.
Tap anywhere on the map or drag the orange pin to see its location.
Find the location of any place
New York City, New York | 40.7128, -74.0060 | 40°42’46″N 74°00’22″W. Your search text is sent to OpenStreetMap to find the place.
Weather at your location
Waiting for your location…
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Weather data from Open-Meteo. Sunrise and sunset are in the local time of your location.
What your elevation means
These numbers appear once your location is found.
On a standard day, using the usual drop with height.
How far you can see over flat, open ground in clear air.
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These are estimates from the standard atmosphere model. Real weather changes them a little. The risk note is general information, not medical advice. If you feel a severe headache, confusion or trouble breathing at height, go down and get medical help.
Mountains and peaks near you
Allow location, or search a place above, to see the peaks around it.
Waiting for a location…
Peak names and heights come from OpenStreetMap volunteers. Only peaks with a name and a listed height are shown, and heights can differ slightly from official USGS figures.
Terrain relief
Adds shaded relief on top of the map above, so ridges, valleys and gullies stand out.
Waiting for the map…
Relief is drawn from Mapterhorn terrain data, which combines open height sources and includes high-resolution LiDAR in some regions, including much of the USA. Zoom in for the most detail. Where only coarser data exists, the relief looks smoother.
USGS topographic maps
Find the official USGS maps (current and historical) for any place in the United States.
Search a US place, tap the map, or press Use my location.
Map scans that cover this spot
The map above is the USGS Topo base map. The list comes from the USGS National Map (US Topo and the Historical Topographic Map Collection) and covers the United States only. USGS maps are public domain; please credit the U.S. Geological Survey. Tap a preview picture to see it larger. Downloads can be large files. Your search text goes to OpenStreetMap, and rounded coordinates go to the USGS.
Compare with famous places
See how mountains, cities and the lowest places on Earth compare with where you are.
| Place | Elevation | Compared with you |
|---|
Highest and lowest point on each continent
| Continent | Highest point | Lowest point |
|---|
Figures are rounded and approximate. City values are typical central elevations, and lake or sea shores change slightly over time. Your location, when you choose to compare, is looked up from a terrain model (Open-Meteo, with OpenTopoData as a backup) using your rounded coordinates. Nothing is stored except your Feet or Meters choice.
Sunrise and sunset times
See sunrise, sunset, solar noon, twilight and day length for your location or any place, on any date.
Press Use my location, or search a place.
The sun is highest in the sky.
First usable light before sunrise.
Last usable light after sunset.
Sun events explained
| Event | Where the sun is | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Civil dawn | 6° below the horizon | First light. You can do most outdoor tasks without a lamp. |
| Sunrise | Top edge reaches the horizon | The sun comes into view. |
| Solar noon | Highest point of the day | Shadows are shortest. This is not always 12:00 on the clock. |
| Sunset | Top edge drops below the horizon | The sun goes out of view. |
| Civil dusk | 6° below the horizon | Last usable light, often called the blue hour. |
Why the length of the day changes
Earth is tilted, so in summer the sun climbs higher and stays up longer, and in winter it stays low and sets sooner. Near the equator the day length hardly changes. Closer to the poles it swings a lot, and above the Arctic and Antarctic circles the sun can stay up all day (midnight sun) or stay down all day (polar night).
Times are calculated in your browser from standard astronomical formulas and are usually accurate to about a minute. They assume a flat horizon at sea level, so hills, buildings and your own height can move the real sunrise or sunset by a few minutes. Searching a place sends your search text to OpenStreetMap, and rounded coordinates to Open-Meteo to find that place’s time zone. Nothing is stored.
What is elevation? (Elevation vs. altitude)
Most people I’ve walked through assume altitude and elevation are interchangeable, and on a casual hike that’s forgivable, but the gap shows up fast once a vehicle or aircraft enters the picture. it is the ground height above sea level that a building or hilltop sits on, the terrain elevation you can read off a map, while altitude above sea level is the more general way to state an object’s height against the same reference. Pilots say MSL for that sea-referenced figure and AGL when they mean clearance over whatever is on the ground, so a drone quoted at 120 m isn’t reporting the same thing as a device-reported height on one of our phones. I once argued this with a friend on a mountain top near Denver, where the GPS accuracy on our screens kept disagreeing while the official height never budged.
Stranger still, the number can dip below sea level and show up as negative values, which is how Badwater Basin sits at −86 m, or −282 ft. The contrarian point is that a free online altimeter isn’t really measuring altitude at all, since a global terrain model looks up your coordinates and returns the ground height instead of trusting your device altitude. That is why Denali at 20,310 ft still towers over Mount Whitney at 14,505 ft, a gap no rounding quirk can hide. Whether you search an address or drag a pin, the answer lands in feet and meters, and you can copy it with one tap.
How to find your elevation
Most people I’ve walked through this start by allowing location access, and I tell them that one tap is the whole job, since the browser shares coordinates and nothing is saved. Behind the scenes those numbers get decoded against a global terrain model, so you see the terrain at your coordinates rather than whatever your handset guesses. The first time I tried it at a trailhead, the map dropped a pin with an estimated ground height a few meters off my hiking partner’s watch. That gap is why the most precise result comes when you share exact location instead of typing a town name, because a looked up point is only as good as the spot you feed it.
The headline figure matters less than what it means: it’s the ground height above mean sea level, with the other unit shown right below it and a Feet or Meters switch for anyone who thinks metric. It’s a free browser-based Elevation calc that runs in any modern browser, so there’s no install, no signup and no login on a phone or desktop, because the page is the app. For a sanity check, compare the ground location with your device altitude, which the page shows separately next to the accuracy values. The map data does the heavy lifting, and whether I’m on a mountain or inside a tall building, the terrain data behind it has held up.
How elevation is measured (altimeter, GPS and DEM)
Out in the field, I stopped trusting a single number years ago, because a phone GPS ±10–30 m fix and a calibrated barometer ±1–3 m reading can disagree by a full storey or two. Satellite signal timing is the heart of it: the receiver measures how long each signal took, multiplies by the speed of light, and needs four or more signals to lock a 3D position. That GPS data gives a GPS ellipsoid height on the WGS84 datum, which is a mathematical earth model rather than true height above sea level, so the raw GPS altitude carries a large vertical error. A barometric altimeter dodges that problem but will drift with weather, which is why I re-zero mine against a surveyed benchmark whenever I pass one.
A DEM works differently, because it never asks your device anything; a terrain model’s resolution decides how well it describes the ground, and the global 90-meter terrain model built from SRTM (90 m version) smooths over cliffs and gullies. Better sources exist, such as USGS 3DEP across the contiguous US, ArcticDEM above 60°N, and Copernicus or GMTED2010 as worldwide layers, with LiDAR terrain behind the best of them. A terrain service simply takes latitude and longitude, returns terrain height in meters or feet, and gives a consistent number that is stable wherever you stand, unlike phone altitude, which wanders. So when I compare a device reading with the land’s own elevation, I treat the gap as a clue about altitude accuracy, not as a verdict on either one.
Accuracy and data sources
Standing in a dense forest with poor reception, I watched my phone GPS altitude wander by 8–16 ft even on flat ground, and that is when I stopped trusting a single number. A phone altimeter leans on air-pressure differences, so it gets recalibrated whenever the weather shifts, while the position fix behind GPS coordinates mostly governs the horizontal answer. That split explains web vs. phone elevation gaps, since GPS is error-prone in built-up areas and a DEM depends on terrain resolution. In practice I treat any accuracy figure as a range, and I stay careful with engineering or flood determination work.
The numbers come from public satellite data and open datasets served through Open-Meteo, with OpenTopoData (SRTM 90 m) as a backup, while polar and remote areas end up coarser. Each value is reported as height above mean sea level, so a given spot returns the same answer on any device. Open-Meteo covers most of the world, yet anyone thinking of aviation use should remember that accuracy from a lookup is only as good as the grid, and this page is not meant for aviation. That is why I tell people to look up a value, compare it with your phone, and accept a spread of several meters.
Why people check their elevation
When I started tracking altitude for hikes, I noticed most people check their elevation because of the weather, since a day above 10,000 ft brings air pressure changes and temperature drops that catch you out long before sunrise. Home cooks care for a different reason, because the cooking and boiling point shifts when water boils cooler, so high-altitude recipes mean you add liquid and cut leavening while doughs rise faster. Runners and golfers chase the performance angle, noting that aerobic capacity dips while balls carry farther in thinner air, and radio hobbyists want a farther horizon, cleaner line of sight and longer signal reach. Then there’s the body itself, where acute mountain sickness can creep in near 8,000 ft or 2,400 m, which is why seasoned climbers keep ascending gradually and spend time acclimatizing.
Pilots and surveyors, working in aviation and engineering, need certified readings above mean sea level, and this page is not a substitute for those, while homeowners in coastal areas ask about flood and surge risk and should check official floodplain maps. Curiosity drives plenty of checks too, since someone standing at Badwater or the Dead Sea shore wants to see the terrain below mean sea level for themselves. Others like ranking the extremes, from Everest and Denali 20,310 down to the Dead Sea shore, or finding out why Denver is known for its one-mile mark. What hooked me personally was flying from Mexico City 7,350 up to Cusco 11,150 ft, where even light exercise felt like a different sport.
Famous places and Extremes
My first trip to La Paz taught me that the thin air announces itself long before the height on any sign does, and it changed how I think about the world’s highest cities. Lhasa gave me the same lesson, because even a slow pace up one flight of stairs had me stopping for breath. Across the countries of the Andes and the Himalaya, the 10,000–12,000 ft band is where most visitors usually start to feel it.
In the US you feel it first in Colorado. The Colorado State Capitol in Denver sits at about 5,280 ft, the famous mile high. Santa Fe, at 7,199 ft, and Aspen, at 7,908 ft, go higher, while Leadville, at 10,152 ft, is where even one flight of stairs has visitors stopping for breath. Salt Lake City, at 4,226 ft, is gentler, though it still feels thinner than coastal cities. Atlanta, at 1,050 ft, and Chicago, at 594 ft, barely register at all.
Then there’s the extreme end. Denali is the US high point, climbing to 6,190 m (about 20,310 ft), and it still falls well short of the 29,000 ft mark where the world’s tallest peaks top out. The top of the contiguous 48 states is Mount Whitney, at 14,505 ft or 4,421 m. For scale, airliners cruise near 35,000 ft, higher than any of these.
The low end is just as interesting. Badwater Basin sits at −282 ft, or −86 m, below sea level, which still surprises people who assume the land only goes up. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48, is only about 85 miles away in a straight line. New Orleans is the quieter case, since parts of its ground level sit below sea level, so flood talk there never really stops. When I compare places like these, I stick to height above mean sea level and one consistent reference, so the numbers stay fair.
Privacy and data use
When I first tried a tool like this on a hiking trip, my real worry was whether location permission meant someone was quietly logging where I stood. It turned out a page can fetch the elevation value with one small request, and this page does not store the point behind it or link it to you. You don’t even have to share your location, because you can tap the map or search an address and get the elevation of that spot instead. People assume privacy costs accuracy, but an accuracy note on the page is usually the only price you pay.
Precise GPS readings are a different matter, and I treat the device altitude they carry as something that is never kept beyond the moment you look at it. Any movement that triggers live updates is handled as it happens, while the elevation service only receives rounded horizontal coordinates and hands back a height. To show the place name and the weather, rounded coordinates also go to BigDataCloud and Open-Meteo, any text you type into the search box goes to OpenStreetMap, and the map pictures load from OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMap and Esri servers. Years ago, a surveyor told me a lat/lng pair is about as private as a street corner, and I half agree, although the device’s location accuracy is what makes it feel personal. That is why I like the tap the map option with no app to install, since you can pick a point yourself and skip detect location entirely.
The geoid and mean sea level
When I first started digging into how surveyors describe height, I was surprised that “sea level” isn’t a line you can stand beside, because the Earth’s surface never stops moving under tides and winds. The fix is a hypothetical shape: picture one big ocean with every current and gust stripped away, settled only by gravity. That shape is the geoid, and it works as the reference that every other height gets measured against. Anyone who has compared two GPS readings at the same trailhead already knows why an agreed baseline matters.
Mean sea level is the averaged version of that ocean, smoothed over many years until the daily swing of the water disappears. Your height above mean sea level is simply how far your spot sits over that averaged surface, and it’s the figure most elevation tools report. I think of it as the short version of all this: your position measured against a calm, imaginary ocean instead of the lumpy ground under your boots. Once that clicks, a strange reading, like a coastal town showing a few feet above or below zero, stops looking like a bug.
What your elevation number means
When I first started digging into how surveyors describe height, I was surprised that “sea level” isn’t a line you can stand beside, because the Earth’s surfaAfter my first night in Denver, I learned that thin air isn’t a metaphor, and that acclimatizing starts well before you feel anything is wrong. The lesson came from reading the figure properly: compared with sea level, the pressure falls by about 1 inHg, or roughly 3.4%, for every 1,000 ft you climb, and that is the core of how air pressure and weather work anywhere. The same drop is what shrinks aerobic capacity, so exercise and performance slip even though your body and altitude feel fine standing still, while balls carry farther on a golf course. Meanwhile the temperature drops by about 3.5°F as you rise, and the farther horizon you get from the top is the one reward nobody argues with.
The cooking and boiling point shift surprised me more than any headache: water boils at 212°F near the coast but about 202°F at five thousand feet, which is roughly 2°F lower per thousand feet and only 194°F up at 10,000 ft. That slower boil is why high-altitude recipes cut back on leavening and add liquid, since batter rises too fast and dries out otherwise. On the health side, acute mountain sickness, the formal name behind altitude sickness, tends to appear past 8,000 ft (about 2,400 m) and often hits harder somewhere in 10,000–12,000 ft, so ascending gradually and sleeping lower remain the main defenses. Even line of sight, radio and GPS behave differently up there, because higher ground gives you longer signal reach.ce never stops moving under tides and winds. The fix is a hypothetical shape: picture one big ocean with every current and gust stripped away, settled only by gravity. That shape is the geoid, and it works as the reference that every other height gets measured against. Anyone who has compared two GPS readings at the same trailhead already knows why an agreed baseline matters.
Weather, speed and heading
When I open this page on a cold morning, the live local conditions panel is the first thing I read, because the temperature and wind tell me more than my own elevation number ever could. It refreshes as you move, so walking from Denver 5,280 toward a trailhead shows how quickly the numbers change. I pair that with satellite data and worldwide terrain data from Open-Meteo, with OpenTopoData kicking in as a fallback when a source stalls, since it covers almost anywhere on Earth.
The speed and heading readings depend on device hardware, your OS, and browsers, so a device compass or fallback heading only appears when reliable movement data exists. Numbers can be shown in feet or meters with the switch, using the conversion factor 1 m = 3.28084 ft, and sunrise and sunset appear in the local time of your location.