Elevation finder – what is the elevation here?

The elevation finder answers "how high above sea level is this place?" for any point on Earth. Each click reads the height from a global elevation model and adds the point to a list, so you can compare the height of a house, a campsite and a summit, or check whether a building plot lies above a flood level. The elevation is shown in metres and feet, with the size of the data grid at that spot, and when you have clicked several points the panel shows the highest and the lowest. The list can be downloaded as CSV for a spreadsheet or as GeoJSON for a GIS, and the share link opens the same points again. On a phone, "Use my location" asks the browser for your position and shows the ground height there; that is usually more reliable than the altitude a phone's GPS shows, which is often 10–20 m off vertically.

How to use it

1. Search for a town, press "Use my location", or zoom the map to the place you want.
2. Click on the exact spot; the elevation appears in the panel within a second.
3. Click more spots to compare them; the list keeps every point with its height.
4. Switch between metres and feet, copy the share link, or download the points as CSV or GeoJSON.

How accurate is it?

Where the numbers come from

The heights are read from the Terrain Tiles dataset, which merges the best open elevation models: USGS 3DEP in the United States (about 10 m grid, from lidar in many areas), national lidar models in the United Kingdom, Austria, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, EU-DEM in Europe, SRTM at about 30 m between 60° north and 56° south, ArcticDEM in the far north, and GMTED2010 and ETOPO1 for gaps and the sea floor. The tile is read at its finest level, where one pixel is about 5 m at the equator and 2.6 m at 57° north, and the four nearest pixels are blended.

How close to the truth

Where a lidar model is behind the tile, the value is usually within a metre or two of the true ground height. The SRTM data that covers most other land has a stated accuracy of about 16 m (90 % of points) and is in practice often within 5–10 m, worse on steep slopes and cliffs where one grid cell spans a large height difference. In the far north and at sea the grid is much coarser, so treat those numbers as approximate.

Ground, sea level and GPS heights

The models describe the ground, not the tops of buildings or trees, although radar-based SRTM can read a few metres high in dense forest and city centres. Heights are close to mean sea level, as on topographic maps. A GPS receiver's raw height is above the ellipsoid instead, which differs from sea level by between about −106 and +85 m depending on where you are, so do not compare the two directly.

Good to know

Not for legal or flood decisions on its own

A few metres matter for flood insurance and building permits. Use the tool to compare places and get a first answer, and ask the national mapping agency or a surveyor for official heights, which are measured to centimetres.

Rivers, lakes and coasts

Over a lake the model gives the water surface; over the sea it may give the sea floor depth as a negative number. Along cliffs and narrow valleys the nearest grid cells can belong to the top or the bottom, so click a little away from the edge for a fair value.

Your location

"Use my location" asks your browser, which may use GPS, Wi-Fi or the network. Indoors or on a laptop the position can be hundreds of metres off, and so can the elevation; check the dot on the map before trusting the number. The position is used only in your browser.