Location List Finder
Find the nearest place in a pasted coordinate list.
Runs locally in your browser
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What is the Location List Finder?
Finding the closest item in a list of places comes up in many everyday jobs: which branch office is nearest to a customer, which warehouse should ship an order, which of several clinics, charging stations or meeting points is closest to a given address. Mapping services answer this for businesses they know about, but often you already have your own list, such as a spreadsheet of sites with latitude and longitude, and simply need it ranked by distance from one point.
This tool does exactly that. Enter a reference latitude and longitude in decimal degrees, paste up to 100 places as name,latitude,longitude lines, and it sorts them from nearest to farthest with the straight-line distance in kilometers. Invalid lines are skipped with a warning rather than breaking the result. Each place gets a link that opens its position on OpenStreetMap. The calculation runs in your browser, and your coordinates are only sent elsewhere if you open one of those map links.
How to use it
- 1Paste a name, latitude and longitude per line.
- 2Enter a reference latitude and longitude.
- 3Review distances and open a location on the map.
How it works
Haversine distance approximates the great-circle distance between latitude and longitude pairs. The tool sorts locations locally and links to OpenStreetMap for a map view.
Example
Paste store names and coordinates, enter your reference point and find the nearest store.
Limitations & notes
- Distances are straight-line approximations, not driving distances.
- The list is supplied by you and is not a live business directory.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get latitude and longitude for an address?
In most map apps you can right-click or long-press a point to copy its coordinates. Google Maps shows them in the right-click menu, and OpenStreetMap shows them via Show address. Copy them in decimal degrees, such as 41.8781, -87.6298. Locations south of the equator have negative latitude and those west of Greenwich have negative longitude, so a missing minus sign can put a place on another continent.
How accurate is a straight-line distance compared with driving distance?
The haversine formula gives the great-circle distance over a spherical Earth, usually within about 0.5% of the true surface distance. Road distance is typically 20 to 40% longer, and much more around lakes, rivers or mountains. Chicago to Milwaukee is about 131 km in a straight line but roughly 150 km by road. Use the ranking as a shortlist, then check travel time in a routing app.
How should I format the list of places?
Put one place per line as name,latitude,longitude, for example Warehouse East,39.7684,-86.1581. Each line must have exactly three comma-separated parts, so a name containing a comma, such as Springfield, IL, makes the line invalid; write Springfield IL instead. Up to 100 lines are read. Distances are shown in kilometers only; multiply by 0.621 for miles.
How many decimal places do coordinates need?
Each decimal place adds a factor of ten in precision. Two decimals locate a point to about 1 km, four decimals to about 11 m, and six decimals to about 11 cm. For choosing the nearest store or office, four decimals are plenty. Coordinates copied from a phone often carry six or more decimals, which is fine to paste as is.
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