Delivery Radius Checker
Set your hub and delivery distance to visualise which areas fall inside the service radius.
By Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor · Updated October 2026
For example, a 5-mile ring around a depot includes the suburb at 4.6 miles and excludes the one at 5.4 — the checker turns 'we probably cover that' into a visible line.
How to use Delivery Radius Checker
A zone nobody has seen is a promise nobody has checked. Draw it:
The Delivery Radius Checker draws your delivery radius around your hub on a live map so you can see which areas fall inside the service zone. Locate the depot, set the distance, and review the coverage against the neighbourhoods and postcodes you serve — before a customer tests it.
- 1Locate the depot.
- 2Set delivery radius.
- 3Review coverage.
What people use Delivery Radius Checker for
1. Answering 'do you deliver to…?'
The boundary question, answered by a picture instead of a postcode debate. If the address is inside the ring, the promise is honest; the Distance Between ZIP Codes tool settles the exact figure.
2. Setting the radius in the first place
Watch the ring grow over the real map — the river suburb it suddenly includes, the industrial estate it just misses — and choose the number with your eyes open.
3. Training drivers and staff
A drawn zone briefs a new driver in seconds and ends the 'I thought we covered that street' conversation before it starts.
4. Auditing platform zones
Marketplace platforms impose their own radii. Overlay yours here and see where theirs over-promises your kitchen.
Worked examples
Two suburbs, one either side of a 5-mile line at 4.6 and 5.4 miles out. The checker includes one and excludes the other — and the honest business then decides whether the line or the road should rule, with the map open.
A ring drawn across a river claims the far bank at 2 miles straight-line — a 6-mile drive. The checker shows the geometry; the drive-time check (linked below) shows the journey. Use both before publishing the zone.
What a delivery radius commits
The area inside common delivery radii (A = πr²) — the operational weight behind the simple line this checker draws.
| Radius | Area inside (mi²) | Area inside (km²) | Typical operation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 mi | 3.14 | 8.14 | Bike and walking couriers |
| 2 mi | 12.57 | 32.55 | Dense urban food delivery |
| 3 mi | 28.27 | 73.22 | Urban and inner-suburban |
| 5 mi | 78.54 | 203.42 | Suburban standard |
| 8 mi | 201.06 | 520.76 | Wide suburban / small town |
| 10 mi | 314.16 | 813.68 | Rural hub with drivers |
'Typical operation' is a reading convention, not a rule — your roads, menu and margins set the real limit. Area math from the Delivery Radius Area Calculator.
A delivery radius is a policy boundary, not a travel-time guarantee
This tool is useful when a business rule is written as a fixed distance from a store, kitchen, depot or service base. A customer can be geometrically inside the radius while still requiring a long drive because of rivers, limited crossings, one-way streets or motorway access. That means a radius works best for simple eligibility rules and quick screening, not for promising a specific arrival time.
If operations are constrained by minutes rather than miles, compare the same origin with a drive-time map before publishing the service zone. For postcode-based order systems, use a ZIP or postal-area workflow separately because a whole postal area may only partially overlap the circle.
How to interpret the result
The most common errors come from using a correct result to answer the wrong geographic question. Keep these points in mind for Delivery Radius Checker:
- Decide geometric vs temporal reach before drawing anything: a 10 km circle and a 15-minute drive area answer different questions, and in car-dependent geography they barely overlap in shape. Circles for policy radii, isochrones for response promises.
- Verify areas against a known object first — measure a football pitch or a city block you know — and you'll calibrate your eye for what a hectare or acre looks like at your zoom. The map preview is the unit your intuition trusts.
Limits & appropriate use
Circles and polygons are geometric truths with semantic limits. A radius says nothing about rivers, one-way systems or response times; an area says nothing about what is inside it. The most expensive misuse is treating a geometric catchment as a service promise — which is why the isochrone tools exist as the temporal counterpart, and why the pages cross-link the two insistently. A second limit is resolution: drawn vertices capture the boundary you click, so curved shores want more clicks, and the perimeter grows (correctly) as you add them — the coastline paradox, politely present in every honest measurement tool.
Within geometry, the numbers are exact on the sphere: areas by spherical excess, boundaries by destination math, exports with their parameters embedded. The escalation ladder is short: cadastral precision needs licensed surveys; population-inside-shapes needs census blocks; drive-time promises need the routing engine. Used as the fast, auditable, shareable geometric layer that feeds those heavier instruments, this is exactly the right tool — and it says so.
- Cadastral/legal area → licensed survey with local datum practice.
- Population inside shapes → census blocks, not city-point sums.
- Response-time promises → isochrones plus operational buffers.
Data & methodology
The workspace draws a spherical distance circle, not a delivery-time or eligibility calculation; real routes and policies can differ.
For source details, licences and model limitations, see Data Sources and Methodology.
Key terms worth knowing
- Spherical cap
- The true shape of a radius circle on a globe.
- Spherical excess
- The method for exact polygon areas on a sphere.
Editorial guidance: MapBench explains the method and limitations so the tool can be used as a transparent reference, not as a black-box answer. For legal boundaries, safety-critical routing, surveying, engineering, regulated decisions or official statistics, verify the result with the responsible authority or a qualified professional.
Category: Radius & Area. Results are intended for everyday analysis and planning unless a page explicitly states otherwise.
Method, assumptions & limits
- This tool’s method
- The workspace draws a spherical distance circle, not a delivery-time or eligibility calculation; real routes and policies can differ.
- Before relying on the answer
- Check the centre, radius or drawn vertices and the selected units. A geometric footprint does not describe which roads or entrances are accessible.
- What the result cannot establish
- A radius is not a travel-time guarantee. For parcel boundaries or legal land area, use an authoritative survey.
Coverage: Worldwide. Search, basemap and external data requests may use third-party services; browser-based does not mean every operation is offline. Read the source and licence notes, calculation methodology and privacy policy. If a result looks inconsistent, report a correction with the inputs and mode used.
Frequently asked questions
Clear answers about the calculation, accuracy and appropriate use.
Drive time delivery?
Pair with drive-time map when minutes matter more than kilometres.
Is a radius the same as driving distance?
No. A radius is a geometric circle around a centre point. Driving reach depends on the road network and usually has an irregular shape.
Can I use this for service-area planning?
Yes for first-pass planning. Use a drive-time or road-network tool when accessibility matters more than straight-line coverage.
Are map measurements legal survey measurements?
No. MapBench measurements are planning/reference outputs unless a page explicitly states otherwise. Use a licensed surveyor for legal boundaries.
Drive time or radius — which should I publish?
Radius is simpler to explain; drive time is honester to experience. Many businesses draw the radius here for the promise, then sanity-check its far corners by road and trim exceptions manually.
What if my zone should follow roads or a river?
Then a circle is the wrong shape — draw the real boundary as a polygon with the drawn-area tools and list the towns inside it.
Can I check a customer's address precisely?
Set the hub, set the radius, and read the map at the address — inside or outside is visible. For a numeric answer, measure hub-to-address directly.
Miles or kilometres?
Both are supported; US operations usually publish miles, European ones kilometres. The ring does not care which the policy is written in.
Can I check more than one depot?
Draw each depot's ring in turn and compare where they overlap — the overlap is double-covered ground your rota can exploit or your zones should partition.
The ring includes an area we would never serve. Now what?
That is the checker doing its job: either trim the radius, carve a polygon zone instead, or publish the exception. All three beat discovering it via a complaint.
Does it work for collection rounds as well?
Yes — any 'within X of base' promise draws the same ring: collections, callouts, service engineer patches.
Related tools and resources
Price the same zone's area in the Delivery Radius Area Calculator, draw it precisely in the Map Radius Tool, and replace the circle with road truth in the Drive Time Map.
More free tools
Sources, methodology & editorial trust
- ✓ Browser-first processing where supported
- ✓ External sources are documented
- ✓ No account required for public tools
- ✓ Review data sources
Calculations are documented with their assumptions, limitations and source context rather than presented as unexplained answers.
Reviewed and maintained by Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor of MapBench.
Part of our radius & service area hub
Delivery Radius Checker sits in the radius & service area cluster, alongside 18 other tools that answer neighbouring questions with different methods or datasets.
You may also need
When this answer is only part of the job, these clusters cover the next step.
Read the guide behind this tool
How to Draw a Radius on Google Maps — Google Maps has no radius button. Here are the exact workarounds to draw a radius circle — plus free tools that do it in one click.