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GPS coordinates finder — get your latitude and longitude in two seconds
Tap the button below and the page reads your exact GPS coordinates straight from your browser. You get the latitude, longitude, accuracy radius, city, and a live map pin — without signing up or installing anything. Below the tool, the guide covers what the two numbers actually mean, how to read DD/DMS/UTM, and where the readings come from.
Find my current location
Click the button above to start.
What latitude and longitude actually are
Think of Earth as an orange covered in two sets of lines. The horizontal rings — running parallel to the equator — are lines of latitude. They tell you how far north or south you are. The vertical lines that run pole to pole are lines of longitude. They tell you how far east or west you are.
Latitude runs from 0° at the equator to 90° at the poles. The North Pole is +90° (latitude 90° N) and the South Pole is −90° (latitude 90° S). Longitude runs from 0° at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, to 180° in either direction, meeting at the International Date Line in the Pacific. East is positive, west is negative.
Any pair of these two numbers identifies one and only one point on Earth's surface. The Eiffel Tower is at 48.8584, 2.2945. The Sydney Opera House is at −33.8568, 151.2153. The negative latitude tells you it's in the southern hemisphere; the longitude tells you it's east of Greenwich. For the deep history of why we measure from Greenwich at all, see the history of latitude and longitude.
How to read each part of a coordinate
Every decimal-degree coordinate has the same shape: latitude, then longitude, separated by a comma. Latitude always comes first. This trips people up because mapping APIs disagree — Google Maps and most consumer apps use the (lat, lon) order, but GeoJSON and many GIS systems use (lon, lat). When in doubt, the larger of the two absolute values is usually longitude (since longitude goes up to 180 and latitude only to 90). The latitude vs longitude guide covers the memory tricks and edge cases.
The number of decimal places tells you how precise the coordinate is:
48.8— ~11 km. Enough to identify a city.48.86— ~1.1 km. Enough to identify a neighborhood.48.858— ~110 m. Enough to identify a city block.48.8584— ~11 m. Enough to identify a building.48.85842— ~1.1 m. Enough to identify a parking space.48.858420— ~11 cm. More than consumer GPS can reliably deliver.
Six decimals (about one meter) is the practical sweet spot. Most smartphone GPS chips are accurate to roughly 3–5 meters under ideal conditions, so writing down more digits than that creates false precision.
The three coordinate formats you'll see
Decimal degrees (DD) — the modern default
Example: 48.858420, 2.294500. Two decimal numbers, comma-separated. This is what every smartphone, GPS receiver, Google Maps URL, and modern API produces. It's the easiest to read, the easiest to paste, and the format the tool above defaults to.
Degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS) — the paper-map classic
Example: 48° 51' 30.3" N, 2° 17' 40.2" E. Each degree is divided into 60 minutes; each minute is divided into 60 seconds. Hemisphere letters (N/S, E/W) replace the ± sign. Older nautical charts, aviation maps, and most land-survey documents use DMS.
Converting between DD and DMS isn't hard. The integer part of the decimal degree is the degrees value. Multiply the remainder by 60 to get minutes (taking the integer part), and multiply that remainder by 60 to get seconds. For example, 48.8584° becomes 48° + (0.8584 × 60)' = 48° 51.504', then 48° 51' (0.504 × 60)" = 48° 51' 30.24". Our coordinates converter does this in one click if you would rather skip the arithmetic.
UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator)
Example: 31U 448262 5411917. UTM divides the world into 60 vertical zones, each treated as a flat plane, then expresses your position as “eastings” and “northings” in meters. It's preferred by hikers, search-and-rescue teams, and the military because distances on a UTM grid translate directly to real-world meters, so you can pace them out on the ground.
How a browser actually finds your coordinates
When you click “Allow” on a location prompt, the browser doesn't magically know where you are. It asks the operating system, which fuses several signals into a single best-guess coordinate:
- GNSS satellites. Your phone or laptop's chip listens for signals from GPS (US), Galileo (EU), GLONASS (Russia), BeiDou (China), and QZSS (Japan). With four or more satellites in view, it triangulates a 3D position. Read how GPS works for the satellite math.
- Wi-Fi BSSID lookup. Apple and Google maintain global databases of Wi-Fi access point MAC addresses paired to GPS coordinates collected from millions of phones. If your device can hear three or more known access points, your OS can infer your position to within ~25 meters even with no GPS signal at all.
- Cell-tower triangulation. On mobile, the carrier's knowledge of which tower you're connected to (and signal strength) provides a fallback when GPS is unavailable. Accuracy: a few hundred meters in cities, several kilometers in rural areas.
- IP geolocation. The slowest, least accurate fallback. Used when none of the above are available, or when the user denies precise location. IP location accuracy explained.
Practical uses for your coordinates
You almost certainly already use coordinates without thinking about them. A few uses where knowing how to read them by hand really pays off:
- Emergency calls. If a dispatcher can't find your address (no street sign, wrong house number, foreign country), six decimals of latitude and longitude give them an unambiguous fix. Our emergency-GPS guide covers the four-line script to say on the call.
- Sharing a place that has no address. A trailhead, a campsite, a fishing spot, the entrance to a cave. Coordinates beat written directions every time. To convert a coordinate back into a readable street address, the address finder handles both directions.
- Measuring distance between two points. The distance calculator uses the Haversine great-circle formula on a pair of coordinates.
- Geocaching. The world's biggest treasure hunt. Over three million caches are hidden globally, each identified only by coordinates.
- Verifying a VPN. Connect to a VPN claiming to be in another country, then open the IP Location tool to see what your IP looks like. Compare against the GPS reading above — if the IP places you elsewhere but GPS still shows your real city, the VPN's IP-side is working but GPS leaks your real location.
- Calibrating GPS-tagged photos. Cameras and phones embed GPS in EXIF metadata. Comparing the EXIF to a known-good reading on the same spot helps you spot a drifting GPS module.
Privacy: what the website actually sees
When you grant the Geolocation API permission, the website receives only the resulting latitude/longitude/accuracy — not which satellites your phone heard or which Wi-Fi access points helped. The tool above processes those numbers entirely in your browser; the map tiles come from OpenStreetMap, and reverse geocoding (turning coordinates into a city name) routes through OpenStreetMap Nominatim. We don't store your coordinates — see our Privacy Policy for the full breakdown of third parties involved.
Related tools on this site
GPS Coordinates
Raw lat/long display
My Location
Action-first one-click tool
My Current Location
Address + coordinates
Live Location
Continuous tracking
Coordinates Converter
DD ↔ DMS ↔ UTM
Distance Calculator
Between two coordinates
Address Finder
Address ↔ coordinates
IP Location
Look up any IP address
Fix Location Issues
Troubleshooting checklist
Frequently asked questions
How do I find my GPS coordinates right now?
Tap the button on the tool above and allow the location permission. Your six-decimal latitude and longitude appear within two seconds, along with an accuracy radius. The "Copy coordinates" button puts the pair on your clipboard in the standard "lat, lon" format every map app understands. On iPhone the Compass app also shows live coordinates at the bottom of the screen; on Android, long-press your blue dot in Google Maps.
What are GPS coordinates of my location?
Two decimal numbers — a latitude and a longitude — that identify any spot on Earth to within a meter. Latitude is between -90 and +90 (how far north or south of the equator you are). Longitude is between -180 and +180 (how far east or west of Greenwich, England). Combined, they are the canonical reference for your position; a street address is derived from them, not the other way round.
How accurate are GPS coordinates from a browser?
On a phone outdoors with a clean satellite view: 3–5 metres. On a phone indoors using Wi-Fi positioning: 10–25 metres. On a laptop with no GPS chip: 25–100 metres via Wi-Fi, or 5–50 kilometres if it falls back to IP geolocation. The accuracy radius reported next to the coordinates is the device’s own 95% confidence circle — trust it.
How many decimal places should I keep when writing down coordinates?
Six is the sweet spot. Four decimals (~11 m) lands on a building; five (~1.1 m) lands on a parked car; six (~11 cm) is survey-grade. Most consumer GPS receivers can deliver three-to-five meters under ideal conditions, so writing more than six digits is false precision. For posting your home publicly, two or three decimals (~110 m – 1 km) coarsens you to a neighborhood without giving away the doorway.
What is the difference between DD, DMS, and UTM?
They all encode the same point in different notations. Decimal degrees (DD) is the modern default — "48.858420, 2.294500." Degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS) is the old nautical and aviation format — "48° 51' 30.3" N, 2° 17' 40.2" E." UTM divides the world into 60 zones and expresses position in metric eastings and northings — preferred by hikers and search-and-rescue because grid distance maps directly to meters on the ground. Our coordinates converter translates between all three with one click.
Why are my GPS coordinates wrong or jumping around?
Three common causes. (1) You are indoors with weak satellite reception, so the OS is using Wi-Fi or IP positioning with a much larger error radius. (2) You denied "precise" permission, so the browser is given a deliberately fuzzed coordinate. (3) A VPN is rewriting your IP, which only matters if no GPS or Wi-Fi positioning is available. Step outside, give the phone fifteen seconds to lock onto satellites, and re-read.