Distance between Amsterdam and San Francisco (straight line)
The straight-line distance between Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and San Francisco (United States) is 5,451 miles (8,772 km), as the crow flies, measured from one city centre to the other. It is the shortest path over the Earth's surface; any road between them is longer.
Straight-line distance
5,451 miles
8,772 km · straight line
Heading from Amsterdam
320° (northwest)
initial compass bearing to San Francisco
Flight time estimate, not a booking
~11 h
at about 800 km/h, in the air only
Straight-line (great-circle) distance, as the crow flies. The road distance is longer.
AmsterdamSan FranciscoThe line is the great circle: straight over the globe, curved on a flat map.
Measure your own two places
Pick any two cities, addresses or coordinates in the calculator, or start from where you are standing. It gives the same straight-line distance, in miles and kilometres.
Amsterdam to San Francisco at a glance
- Straight-line distance
- 5,451 miles (8,772 km), as the crow flies
- Heading from Amsterdam
- 320° (northwest) to San Francisco
- Heading from San Francisco
- 30° (north-northeast) to Amsterdam
- Midpoint
- 65.4267° N, 73.3035° W, halfway along the straight line
- Flight time estimate, not a booking
- About 11 h in the air at a cruising speed of 800 km/h along the straight line. Take-off, landing, the real flight path and any stops add more.
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- 52.3740° N, 4.8897° E (city centre)
- San Francisco, United States
- 37.7749° N, 122.4194° W (city centre)
Nearby city pairs
Other distances from Amsterdam
- Amsterdam to London222 miles
- Amsterdam to Paris268 miles
- Amsterdam to Berlin359 miles
- Amsterdam to Barcelona770 miles
- Amsterdam to Rome807 miles
- Amsterdam to Madrid921 miles
Other distances from San Francisco
- San Francisco to Los Angeles347 miles
- San Francisco to Las Vegas417 miles
- San Francisco to Houston1,643 miles
- San Francisco to Chicago1,854 miles
- San Francisco to Mexico City1,888 miles
- San Francisco to Toronto2,263 miles
Questions
Is 5,451 miles (8,772 km) the driving distance from Amsterdam to San Francisco?
No. 5,451 miles (8,772 km) is the straight-line distance between the two city centres, as the crow flies. A road route is always longer, because roads bend around terrain and water, and MapGO does not measure driving distance or travel time.
How is the distance between Amsterdam and San Francisco measured?
Along a great circle: the shortest line over the Earth's surface, from Amsterdam's centre (52.3740° N, 4.8897° E) to San Francisco's (37.7749° N, 122.4194° W). This is what "straight-line distance" and "as the crow flies" mean on a globe. On a flat map the line can look curved.
How accurate is this distance?
Within about 0.5% for the two centre points. The figure treats the Earth as a sphere (the haversine formula), while the real Earth is slightly flattened, which shifts a long straight-line distance by up to about 0.5%. Measuring from another part of either city changes it more, since a large city can be tens of kilometres across.
Computed by MapGO from each city's centre point (GeoNames) with the haversine formula. All distances on this page are straight lines over the Earth's surface, not road distances.