Free Online Map Tools
Seven single-purpose tools for measuring distance and area, drawing a radius, checking elevation, and estimating population — each doing one job, directly in the browser. No account, no install, no trial.
Radius Around Point
Draw a circle of any radius around a point on the map.
Elevation Where I Am
Find the elevation above sea level at your location.
Find Population on Map
Estimate the population living within an area.
Measure Distance
Click points on the map to measure the distance between them.
How Far Is It Between
Get the straight-line distance between two places.
Area Calculator
Draw a shape on the map to calculate its area.
Elevation Profile
See the elevation change along a path you draw.
Start from the question
Several of these overlap, and the fastest route in is usually the question you arrived with rather than the tool name.
How far is it from here to there?
If you can name both places, how far is it between gives you the number from two search boxes. If the endpoints are specific spots rather than place names — a trailhead, a gate, a corner of a field — click them directly in measure distance, which also adds up multi-leg routes.
How big is this piece of land?
Trace the boundary in the area calculator and read the result in square metres, square kilometres, acres or hectares. It handles any shape you can click around, not just rectangles.
What falls within a certain distance of this point?
Radius around a point draws the circle. Worth knowing before you rely on it: a radius is a straight-line distance, not a drive time, and the two diverge sharply around water and hills.
How high is this spot above sea level?
Elevation where I am looks up the terrain height anywhere you click, or at your current location. It reads from a terrain model rather than your device’s own altitude sensor, which is the more stable of the two for a fixed point.
How much climbing is on this route?
The elevation profile charts the ups and downs along a path you draw and totals the gain and loss — the figure that predicts how hard a route will feel, which net elevation change does not.
How many people live inside this area?
Draw the shape in find population on a map for an estimate built from gridded census data. It is an estimate in the real sense, and the page is explicit about where it goes wrong.
Reference
Background that stands on its own, and that the tool pages link to when a term needs more room than an aside allows.
Map and Geodesy Glossary
Plain definitions for the terms these tools use — great circle, geoid, DEM, Web Mercator and the rest.
Distance and Area Units
Conversion tables for metres, miles, acres, hectares and the rest, with the exact factors.
How Long Is a Degree of Latitude?
How far a degree, minute and second of latitude and longitude stretch on the ground, by latitude.
How these tools work
Distance, area and radius are computed in your browser from the coordinates you click — geodesically, on the curved surface of the Earth rather than on the flat map image, which is what keeps the numbers correct at high latitude and at every zoom level. Nothing about those three leaves your device.
The three that need outside data say so. Elevation comes from the Copernicus terrain model via Open-Meteo, place search from Geoapify, and population from WorldPop at the University of Southampton. Map tiles throughout are OpenStreetMap.
Each tool page explains what its number means and, more usefully, where it stops being trustworthy — the resolution of the underlying grid, the assumptions baked into a dataset, the difference between a straight line and a route. The tools are free and ad-supported. More on that in about, or get in touch with a correction or a request.