Elevation Finder: Get the Altitude of Any Point

Last updated 2026-10-21 · MapElevation

Find elevation from latitude and longitude

This elevation finder is designed for a known point rather than a place name. You may have coordinates from a GPS track, a map pin, a field notebook, or another mapping service. Enter the pair in decimal degrees and submit it. Once the marker appears, check its surroundings: a valid numerical pair can still describe the wrong place if a digit, sign, or field order was copied incorrectly.

The elevation map emphasises browsing the terrain, while this page makes coordinates the primary input. For a street address rather than a coordinate, use the address elevation finder. Keeping these tasks distinct helps you see where uncertainty enters the lookup. Address matching introduces its own location estimate; entering coordinates bypasses that step but does not improve the terrain dataset.

How to use this page

1. Enter latitude and longitude in the labelled decimal-degree fields.
2. Submit the point and check its map position against a recognisable landmark.
3. Read the sampled height, units, model, original resolution, and reference.
4. Record the same coordinate and source when comparing with another reading.

How to enter coordinates correctly

Latitude describes the north–south position and longitude the east–west position. Preserve negative signs. A west longitude entered as a positive number selects an eastern longitude, even if every other digit is unchanged. Do not paste directional letters into a decimal field unless you have first converted the coordinate to the format the form expects. A value that looks familiar is not enough to establish that its interpretation is correct.

Coordinate pairs from software are not always ordered the same way. The labels on this page are latitude followed by longitude; geospatial data formats often use longitude followed by latitude. If you are uncertain, compare the pin with a recognisable place or use what is my elevation to obtain a nearby position as a cross-check. The supported map projection also excludes the immediate polar regions.

Choose a point on the map

You can select the map directly instead of typing coordinates. The tool retrieves the relevant terrain tile and reads the encoded height at the selected pixel. The result describes that modeled surface location. A click on a broad label is not a query for the whole city, and a click near a road is not automatically snapped to the road’s engineered surface.

Compare a few nearby points when exploring a ridge, a valley, or a slope. If a readout changes abruptly, inspect the landform, pin position, and source limitations before concluding that the change is real. The contour map generator provides another view of the same modeled terrain, with lines connecting equal elevations. These visualisations are complementary rather than independent measurements.

Understand the elevation result

The returned card pairs the height with model type, original resolution, and vertical reference. Feet and metres are display choices. A DSM can represent vegetation or buildings above bare earth, and tile resampling can smooth or alter small features. Read elevation data accuracy when the distinction could affect your interpretation.

The height above sea level guide explains why a GPS altitude or a published flood elevation may not be directly comparable with this number. This finder does not infer a local datum transformation, calculate a building’s floor height, or certify a benchmark. Those tasks require information that is not present in a global surface tile.

Make a coordinate lookup reproducible

For a meaningful example, preserve the exact coordinate, chosen dataset, query date, and units along with the result. A city’s commonly quoted elevation is not a substitute for sampling the specific point shown. The recorded example below includes that audit information; it must not be interpreted as a city-wide altitude.

A timeout means the requested terrain did not complete within the allowed wait. Use Retry to repeat the same lookup, or inspect another point to distinguish a local data issue from a connection problem. You can continue reading this page while a tile request is pending, and precise coordinates are not included in the performance analytics events.

A recorded point-query example

At latitude 39.7392, longitude −104.9903, a Denver-area point query on 2026-10-21 decoded a GLO-30 terrain-tile sample of 1,596.5 metres. The result card rounds that to 1,597 m or 5,238 ft. The browser’s feet readout was checked against the independent tile decode. The saved example record includes the tile URL, pixel, RGB values, and file checksum; it is a surface-model observation in the EGM2008 reference, not a surveyed building height or an independent vertical-accuracy assessment.