How to find the elevation of a location

Elevation, altitude and height above sea level

Elevation is the height of the ground above mean sea level. Altitude usually means the height of something above the ground or above sea level, such as an aircraft. When people ask "what is my elevation" they want the height of the ground where they stand, which is what an elevation map shows.

Mean sea level is not a simple surface. The heights in global elevation data refer to a geoid, a model of where the sea surface would be if it extended under the continents. It is not the same as the WGS84 ellipsoid that GPS uses: the two differ by up to about 100 metres around the world. That is one reason why a raw GPS height can disagree with a map by tens of metres.

Find the elevation step by step

The elevation finder works without an account. Your position and the points you click are not sent to GeoDrafter; the browser downloads the elevation tiles for the area and reads the height from them.

1. Open the elevation finder and search for a town, or pan and zoom the map to the place you want.
2. Click or tap the exact spot. The elevation appears in the list and as a label on the map.
3. Or press Use my location to get the elevation where you are; your browser asks for permission first.
4. Click more points to compare heights, switch between metres and feet, and export the points as CSV or GeoJSON.

Where the elevation data comes from

GeoDrafter uses the open Terrain Tiles dataset hosted on Amazon Web Services, which combines the best available elevation models for each part of the world. In the United States it uses the USGS 3D Elevation Program, with a grid spacing of 10 metres or finer and laser scanning (lidar) in many areas. National lidar models cover the United Kingdom, Austria, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, and EU-DEM, with a grid of about 25 metres, covers the rest of Europe. Elsewhere it falls back on global satellite data such as SRTM, with a grid spacing of about 30 metres, and on other sources for high latitudes and the sea floor.

The tool reads the tile at zoom level 15, where one pixel covers about 5 metres at the equator, and interpolates between the four nearest pixels. The real detail is never finer than the source data: in a 30 metre dataset a narrow ridge, a quarry or a river bank can be smoothed away.

How accurate is the elevation?

For lidar-based data in flat or rolling open land, the height is usually within half a metre to a few metres. For SRTM-based data the error is typically around 5 to 10 metres and can be larger on steep slopes, in deep valleys and in cities. Radar satellites see part of the tree canopy and the roofs of buildings, so in forests and city centres the value can lie above the ground.

Phone GPS heights are usually less accurate than the map. Vertical GPS errors are often 10 to 30 metres, and many browsers do not report a height at all. A barometric altimeter in a watch drifts with the weather unless you reset it at a known height. When elevation matters, for flood risk, building permits or surveying, use official national data or ask a surveyor, and use the map value as a check.

Elevation of famous places

Some reference points help when you check a result. Denver, Colorado is known as the Mile High City because the State Capitol steps are about 5,280 feet (1,609 metres) above sea level. The summit of Mount Everest was measured at 8,848.86 metres in 2020. The shore of the Dead Sea lies about 430 metres below sea level and is still falling. Parts of the Netherlands and of Lammefjord in Denmark lie a few metres below sea level, behind dikes.