Qibla Direction Finder
Set your location to get the great-circle bearing toward the Kaaba (Makkah) for prayer orientation.
By Aryan Khan, Founder & Editor · Updated October 2026
For example, from New York the qibla bearing is 58.5° — northeast, not southeast — because the shortest path to Mecca crosses the Atlantic toward the sunrise side of the compass rose's north.
How to use Qibla Direction Finder
One point on Earth, one direction from everywhere:
The Qibla Direction Finder computes the initial great-circle bearing from your location to the Kaaba in Mecca (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E) — the direction faced in prayer. Enter or detect your location and read the bearing from true north, ready to apply with a compass or phone.
- 1Set your current location as the start point.
- 2Set Mecca (Kaaba) as the destination — search "Kaaba" or use coordinates about 21.4225°N, 39.8262°E.
- 3Read the initial bearing — that is the Qibla on a true-north compass.
What people use Qibla Direction Finder for
1. Daily prayer anywhere
Home, hotel, airport, campsite — the bearing depends only on where you stand. In New York it is 58.5°; in London 119.0°; the finder computes yours rather than your guessing from a wall chart.
2. Setting a prayer space
A musalla or home prayer corner gets its qibla line once, accurately — mark it from the computed bearing instead of inheriting a previous occupant's guess.
3. Mosque and mihrab orientation checks
Historical mihrabs sometimes follow older conventions (cardinal directions, or the Kaaba's own wall axes). The computed great-circle bearing is the modern reference to compare them against.
4. Understanding the map surprise
From North America the qibla points northeast — over the Atlantic, not across the Pacific. The Initial Great Circle Bearing Calculator shows the same geometry for any destination.
Worked examples
On a flat map Mecca looks southeast of New York. On the sphere, the shortest path arcs north-east — initial bearing 58.5° — crossing the Atlantic. Flat-map intuition fails here precisely because the Earth is round, and this finder exists to replace the intuition.
London 119.0° (southeast, as intuition expects), Paris 119.2°, Berlin 136.7°. Europe is close enough to Mecca that flat and spherical intuitions nearly agree — distance 2,566 to 2,979 miles rather than New York's 6,404.
Qibla bearings from major cities
Computed initial great-circle bearings to the Kaaba (21.4225, 39.8262).
| City | Qibla bearing | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 58.5° | 6,404 mi |
| Chicago | 48.7° | 6,926 mi |
| Los Angeles | 23.9° | 8,341 mi |
| London | 119.0° | 2,979 mi |
| Paris | 119.2° | 2,794 mi |
| Berlin | 136.7° | 2,566 mi |
Bearings are from true north. A magnetic compass needs the local declination applied — the finder's compass FAQ below is the one to read before stepping outside.
Qibla direction is a great-circle bearing from your location to the Kaaba
The Qibla direction can be calculated from latitude and longitude as the initial great-circle bearing toward the Kaaba in Makkah. This provides a geographic reference direction for a chosen coordinate and avoids relying on rough east-or-west assumptions that vary significantly around the world.
A phone compass can still be affected by magnetic interference, calibration and the difference between true and magnetic north. Use the calculated bearing as the geographic reference and calibrate the physical device when aligning on site.
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 Qibla Direction Finder:
- Use the midpoint tool instead of averaging coordinates when splitting journeys: latitude/longitude averages distort over long legs and fail across the date line, while the spherical midpoint follows the actual path the distance was measured along.
- Always confirm which distance you need before quoting one: straight-line for physical questions, road distance for driving, and network time for schedules. The three can differ by half again in mountainous or island geography, and quoting the wrong one is the most common distance mistake in reports.
Limits & appropriate use
The honest limits here are about category, not quality: great-circle math is near-exact, but it answers 'how far over the surface', not 'how far as driven, flown or walked'. Airline distances follow airways and winds; odometers follow detours; hikers follow switchbacks. Quoting a straight-line number into a fuel budget is the classic misuse, which is why the tools keep the ladder visible — crow-flies, road, time — and label each rung. A second limit is definitional: 'city to city' means mapped centre to mapped centre, and a suburb-to-airport question is a different measurement wearing the same sentence.
Within those bounds the numbers are durable: reproducible from coordinates alone, stable across tools that use the same radius convention, and accurate to a fraction of a percent of geodetic truth. The escalation path is short and rarely needed — ellipsoidal libraries (Karney's algorithms) for survey-grade millimetres, the routing engine for network truth, and the airline's schedule for invoice truth. Knowing which authority owns which number is the entire craft of distance literacy.
- Survey-grade millimetres → ellipsoidal geodesic libraries, not sphere math.
- Fuel and schedule planning → road routing plus your congestion buffer.
- Airline invoicing → carrier distance tables (airways ≠ great circles).
Data & methodology
Great-circle initial bearing from your coordinates to the Kaaba (approx. 21.4225°N, 39.8262°E).
For source details, licences and model limitations, see Data Sources and Methodology.
Key terms worth knowing
- Initial bearing
- Compass angle from true north at departure along a great circle.
- Geodesic
- The ellipsoid-true shortest path; haversine approximates it within ~0.3%.
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: Distance & Bearing. Results are intended for everyday analysis and planning unless a page explicitly states otherwise.
Method, assumptions & limits
- This tool’s method
- Great-circle initial bearing from your coordinates to the Kaaba (approx. 21.4225°N, 39.8262°E).
- Before relying on the answer
- Keep the endpoints and measurement mode fixed when comparing results. A surface separation, a compass bearing and a road distance are different outputs.
- What the result cannot establish
- A rounded coordinate or a city-centre search changes the endpoints. Do not interpret displayed decimal places as survey accuracy.
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.
How do I use the bearing tool for Qibla?
Set your position as the start point and Mecca / the Kaaba as the end point — the initial bearing is the Qibla direction (true north).
Magnetic compass?
The result is true (geographic) bearing. Apply local magnetic declination if using a magnetic compass.
How accurate is this distance?
The geometric calculation is suitable for planning and comparison, but the answer is only as accurate as the coordinates you provide. Road, terrain and legal distances can differ.
Can I use coordinates instead of place names?
Yes. Where the tool accepts locations, you can paste latitude and longitude directly for a more explicit input.
Why can this differ from Google Maps or a road route?
Straight-line and geodesic tools measure geometry on Earth, while road-routing tools follow an actual transport network. They answer different questions.
Why do some mosques face a different direction?
Communities have used several conventions across history — great-circle computation, rhumb lines, and cardinal approximations among them. This finder reports the great-circle (shortest-path) bearing, the method most contemporary authorities and apps use; local practice remains a matter for your community.
True north or magnetic north?
The bearing is from true north. Magnetic declination varies by place and year (roughly 13° west in New York, near 0–1° east in London at present), so a physical compass reading must be corrected by the local value from a current declination chart.
How accurate is the bearing?
The spherical computation is precise to well under a degree for any location — far finer than a phone compass or hand compass can be held. Instrument error, not geometry, is the practical limit.
Inside Mecca itself?
Within the city, direction is toward the Kaaba itself rather than a computed bearing; inside the Grand Mosque, you face it directly. The finder is for everywhere else on Earth.
What about the opposite direction?
The antipode of the Kaaba lies in the South Pacific near French Polynesia; from there every direction is qibla. Everywhere else, one great-circle direction is the answer this page computes.
Does the bearing change as I travel?
Continuously — it is a function of your position alone. A long flight crosses many qibla bearings, which in-flight entertainment maps quietly recompute.
Phone compass or this page?
Use this page for the number and the phone to apply it — and hold the phone away from metal and magnets, calibrating with the figure-eight motion, since phone magnetometers are easily fooled indoors.
Related tools and resources
Any destination: the Initial Great Circle Bearing Calculator; constant-heading alternative: the Rhumb Line Bearing Calculator; bearings generally: the Bearing Calculator.
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 bearing & midpoint hub
Qibla Direction Finder sits in the bearing & midpoint cluster, alongside 17 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 Choose a Fair Meeting Point Between Two or More Places — A practical guide to geographic midpoints, travel-time fairness and choosing a meeting location that works in the real world rather than only on a straight-line map.