Qibla Direction Finder
Search for your city, or let your browser locate you, to get the exact bearing to the Kaaba in Makkah — with the compass point and the great-circle distance.
Choose a location
Search for your city above, or tap “Use my location”. The bearing is computed in your browser from that place’s coordinates.
This is true north, not magnetic northThe bearing above is measured clockwise from geographic (true) north. The needle of a compass — including the one in your phone — points at magnetic north instead, and the two are not the same place: depending on where you are, they can differ by up to about 20°, and by far more in some regions near the poles. That difference is called magnetic declination. If you line a magnetic compass up with this number without correcting for it, you will be facing the wrong way.Read the full noteShow less
Use a compass app that offers a “true north” setting, or look up the declination for your area and add it before you turn. A phone compass is also easily thrown off by cars, steel structures, speakers and magnetic phone cases. Where it matters, confirm against the mihrab of your local mosque.
How this is calculated
The Qibla is the initial bearing of the great-circle path from your location to the Kaaba at 21.4225° N, 39.8262° E — the shortest route across the surface of the Earth. Because the Earth is a sphere, that bearing is not the direction you would draw as a straight line on a flat map. From most of North America and northern Europe the shortest path to Makkah runs much further north than people expect, which is why a line drawn on a map and a correct Qibla often disagree by tens of degrees.
Bearing = atan2( sin Δλ , cos φ₁ · tan φ₂ − sin φ₁ · cos Δλ ), normalised to 0–360°, where φ₁ is your latitude, φ₂ is the latitude of the Kaaba, and Δλ is the difference in longitude between you and the Kaaba. Distance is the haversine great-circle distance on a mean Earth radius of 6371 km.
Read the full explanation: how the Qibla direction is calculated