Distance between Cairo and Istanbul (straight line)
The straight-line distance between Cairo (Egypt) and Istanbul (Turkey) is 1,235 km (768 miles), 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
1,235 km
768 miles · straight line
Heading from Cairo
351° (north)
initial compass bearing to Istanbul
Flight time estimate, not a booking
~1 h 35 min
at about 800 km/h, in the air only
Straight-line (great-circle) distance, as the crow flies. The road distance is longer.
CairoIstanbulThe 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.
Cairo to Istanbul at a glance
- Straight-line distance
- 1,235 km (768 miles), as the crow flies
- Heading from Cairo
- 351° (north) to Istanbul
- Heading from Istanbul
- 170° (south) to Cairo
- Midpoint
- 35.5437° N, 30.1784° E, halfway along the straight line
- Flight time estimate, not a booking
- About 1 h 35 min 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.
- Cairo, Egypt
- 30.0626° N, 31.2497° E (city centre)
- Istanbul, Turkey
- 41.0138° N, 28.9497° E (city centre)
Nearby city pairs
Other distances from Cairo
- Cairo to Rome2,130 km
- Cairo to Dubai2,430 km
- Cairo to Berlin2,891 km
- Cairo to Barcelona2,894 km
- Cairo to Paris3,209 km
- Cairo to Amsterdam3,282 km
Other distances from Istanbul
- Istanbul to Rome1,371 km
- Istanbul to Berlin1,736 km
- Istanbul to Amsterdam2,211 km
- Istanbul to Barcelona2,233 km
- Istanbul to Paris2,253 km
- Istanbul to London2,498 km
Questions
Is 1,235 km (768 miles) the driving distance from Cairo to Istanbul?
No. 1,235 km (768 miles) 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 Cairo and Istanbul measured?
Along a great circle: the shortest line over the Earth's surface, from Cairo's centre (30.0626° N, 31.2497° E) to Istanbul's (41.0138° N, 28.9497° E). 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.