Address to Coordinates converter
Enter an address, place name, or postcode to get its coordinates in every format. Or switch direction and paste a coordinate to find the nearest address.
How addresses become coordinates
Turning an address into a latitude and longitude pair is called geocoding. An address such as 10 Downing Street, London is a human label. It carries no measurable position on its own. Geocoding looks that label up in a database of mapped places and returns the coordinate recorded against it, for example 51.503363, -0.127625.
That is a genuine lookup, not a calculation. There is no formula that converts text into a position, which is why the result depends entirely on how well the address is recorded in the source data. Once the coordinate is known, though, converting it into other coordinate formats is pure mathematics, and that part happens instantly on your device.
This tool uses two free, open data sources. UK postcodes are looked up through postcodes.io, which serves the Office for National Statistics postcode centroids. Everything else, including street addresses, place names, landmarks, and international postcodes, is looked up through Nominatim, the search service built on OpenStreetMap. Once a coordinate comes back, CoordinateMapper converts it locally into Decimal Degrees, DMS, DDM, UTM, MGRS, UK Grid, UK Easting/Northing, and US State Plane.
How to get lat long from an address
The whole process takes a few seconds and needs no account or install:
- 1. Enter the address. Type a full street address, a place name, a landmark, or a postcode into the box at the top of this page. The more context you give (town, city, country), the more reliable the match.
- 2. Press "Get coordinates". If more than one place matches, a list of candidates appears. Pick the correct one and every result updates.
- 3. Read the coordinates. The result shows Decimal Degrees by default, because that is the format that pastes straight into Google Maps. Use the dropdown above the coordinate to switch to DMS, DDM, UTM, MGRS, UK Grid, UK Easting/Northing, or State Plane, wherever those apply to the location.
- 4. Check the address breakdown. Underneath the coordinates you will see exactly what was matched, split into street, town, district, county, postcode, and country. This is the fastest way to confirm the tool found the place you meant rather than a similarly named one.
- 5. Copy or plot. The copy button copies whichever format you have selected. "Open on the map" drops a pin at the location on the full interactive map, where you can measure, draw, add more points, or export.
Formats that do not apply to a location are left out of the dropdown rather than shown blank. Search an address in Manchester and you will get UK Grid and UK Easting/Northing but no State Plane. Search one in Denver and you will get State Plane but no UK Grid. That is expected: UK Grid only covers Great Britain and State Plane only covers the United States.
Coordinates to address (reverse lookup)
The opposite job, turning a coordinate into an address, is called reverse geocoding. It comes up constantly: a GPS logger gives you a point and you need to know which street it is on, a client sends a UTM pair and you need a postal address for a report, or a photo's location metadata needs turning into something a human can read.
Switch the tool to "Coordinates to address" and paste your coordinate. The input accepts every format CoordinateMapper understands, including Decimal Degrees, DMS, DDM, UTM, MGRS, UK Grid references, and UK Easting/Northing, and it auto-detects which one you have pasted. The tool returns the nearest addressable feature along with how many metres away it sits from the exact point you entered.
That distance figure matters. Reverse geocoding finds the closest known address, which is not always the right one. A point in the middle of a field will return the nearest farm or lane, possibly several hundred metres away. A point in a dense city centre usually returns a building within a few metres. Always read the distance before treating the result as authoritative.
Some coordinates have no address at all. Out at sea, in deserts, and across large unmapped areas there is simply nothing to return. The tool tells you that plainly and still shows the coordinate in every format, because those conversions remain perfectly valid.
Which coordinate format do you need?
The tool can show the same point in any of these formats, so the only question is which one you need. This table covers the common cases:
| If you need it for… | Format |
|---|---|
| Google Maps, Apple Maps, a sat nav | Decimal Degrees |
| A spreadsheet, database, or web app | Decimal Degrees |
| A UK planning, survey, or Ordnance Survey job | UK Grid or UK E/N |
| A GIS project in QGIS or ArcGIS | UTM |
| A US engineering or land record | State Plane |
| Emergency response or military coordination | MGRS |
| A marine or aviation chart | DMS or DDM |
When in doubt, use Decimal Degrees. It is the most widely accepted format anywhere. For a full explanation of how each one is built, read Coordinate Formats Explained, and if the destination is specifically Google Maps see How to Convert Coordinates for Google Maps.
How accurate is address geocoding?
This is the part most tools gloss over. The coordinate you get back is only as precise as the address you gave and the data behind it. Understanding the difference prevents a lot of wasted time.
- Full street address, well mapped: typically within a few metres of the building. Often the coordinate sits on the building footprint or its entrance.
- Street name with no number: a point somewhere along the street, usually near its midpoint. Can easily be 100 m or more from the property you had in mind.
- UK postcode: the centroid of the postcode unit, not a specific building. Usually within roughly 50 to 100 m of any given address in that postcode.
- Town, city, or region: a single representative point, often the historic centre or civic centre. Useful for overview maps, useless for anything site-specific.
- Landmarks and named features: generally the centre of the feature. For something large like a park or a mountain, the centre may be a long way from the part you care about.
Two habits will keep you out of trouble. First, always read the address breakdown and the matched feature type shown under the results, so you know whether you got a building, a street, or a whole town. Second, use "Open on the map" to eyeball the pin before committing the coordinate to a drawing or report. A thirty second visual check catches almost every geocoding error.
Note also that geocoding precision and coordinate precision are different things. A coordinate printed to six decimal places looks accurate to about 11 centimetres, but if it came from a postcode centroid it is still only accurate to about 100 metres on the ground. Extra decimal places never add real accuracy. See Coordinate Precision Explained for why this distinction matters.
UK postcodes: what the coordinates actually point at
UK postcodes deserve their own explanation because they are the single most common input to a coordinates finder in Britain, and they are widely misunderstood.
A full postcode such as SW1A 1AA does not identify one building. It identifies a delivery unit that typically covers around 15 addresses, though it ranges from a single large building to a whole rural lane. When you look up a postcode here, you get the official ONS centroid: one representative point calculated for that unit and published as open data. It is consistent, authoritative, and reproducible, which is exactly what you want for analysis and reporting. It is not the position of a particular front door.
Enter a partial postcode, or outcode, such as SW1A, and you get the centre of that whole postcode area instead, which covers a much larger footprint. That is useful for regional mapping and nothing more precise.
Because postcode lookups come from the ONS dataset, they also return useful administrative context alongside the coordinates: the ward, the parish, the local authority district, the county, the region, and the country. That saves a separate lookup when you are preparing planning or reporting data. If you need a specific building rather than a postcode centroid, type the full street address instead, and expect a much tighter result.
One important technical note for UK work: the coordinates returned are in WGS84, the same datum GPS and web maps use. The UK Grid and Easting/Northing values shown alongside them are properly transformed to OSGB36, so they line up with Ordnance Survey mapping rather than sitting roughly 100 metres off. If that shift is unfamiliar, read WGS84 vs OSGB36.
Why an address might not be found
Occasionally a search returns nothing, or returns somewhere obviously wrong. The cause is nearly always one of these:
- Not enough context. "High Street" exists thousands of times over. Add the town, city, or country and the match usually resolves immediately.
- The address is too new. Recently built estates and new-build units often are not in open map data yet. Search the street or a neighbouring address and adjust the pin on the map.
- It only exists in a postal database. Some flat, unit, and sub-building addresses exist in commercial postal files but not in open mapping data. The parent building or the postcode will still get you close.
- Ambiguous place name. There are Londons, Birminghams, and Richmonds on several continents. Check the candidate list and the address breakdown before copying anything.
- Unusual formatting. Extra punctuation, a company name, "c/o" lines, or a department name can confuse the match. Strip it back to building, street, town, postcode.
- Rate limiting. The lookup services are free and shared, so hammering them with rapid repeat searches can briefly throttle you. Wait a few seconds and try again.
If the address genuinely is not mappable, work backwards instead: find the location visually on the interactive map, click the spot, and read the coordinates off directly. That is often faster than fighting an address that no database recognises.
What people use address coordinates for
- Preparing GIS and CAD data. A list of site addresses has to become mappable points before it can be layered, measured, or analysed in QGIS, ArcGIS, or AutoCAD.
- Directing people to hard-to-find places. Site entrances, loading bays, gates, and rural properties are often easier to share as a coordinate than as an address.
- Surveying and field work. Getting an approximate coordinate for a site before mobilising, then refining it with GPS on the ground.
- Planning and reporting. UK planning documents and environmental reports frequently require a grid reference rather than a postal address.
- Asset and infrastructure records. Attaching a coordinate to each address in a portfolio so it can be mapped, routed, or clustered.
- Aviation, marine, and outdoor navigation. Converting a shore address or trailhead into DMS or DDM for a chartplotter or handheld GPS.
Converting many addresses or coordinates
The tool on this page handles one location at a time, which suits most jobs. If you already have a list of coordinates rather than addresses, the bulk converter takes hundreds of them at once, in mixed formats, and returns every format side by side with CSV export.
A practical workflow for a list of addresses is to geocode the ones you need here, paste the resulting coordinates into the bulk converter as a batch, and export the whole set in whichever format your project expects.