Distance between Cape Town and Durban (straight line)
The straight-line distance between Cape Town and Durban, both in South Africa, is 1,272 km (790 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
1,272 km
790 miles · straight line
Heading from Cape Town
73° (east-northeast)
initial compass bearing to Durban
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.
Cape TownDurbanThe 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.
Cape Town to Durban at a glance
- Straight-line distance
- 1,272 km (790 miles), as the crow flies
- Heading from Cape Town
- 73° (east-northeast) to Durban
- Heading from Durban
- 246° (west-southwest) to Cape Town
- Midpoint
- 32.0478° S, 24.8661° 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.
- Cape Town, South Africa
- 33.9258° S, 18.4232° E (city centre)
- Durban, South Africa
- 29.8579° S, 31.0292° E (city centre)
Nearby city pairs
Other distances from Cape Town
- Cape Town to Gqeberha663 km
- Cape Town to Bloemfontein911 km
- Cape Town to Johannesburg1,262 km
- Cape Town to Pretoria1,308 km
- Cape Town to São Paulo6,345 km
- Cape Town to Buenos Aires6,869 km
Other distances from Durban
- Durban to Bloemfontein473 km
- Durban to Johannesburg501 km
- Durban to Pretoria536 km
- Durban to Gqeberha685 km
Questions
Is 1,272 km (790 miles) the driving distance from Cape Town to Durban?
No. 1,272 km (790 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 Cape Town and Durban measured?
Along a great circle: the shortest line over the Earth's surface, from Cape Town's centre (33.9258° S, 18.4232° E) to Durban's (29.8579° S, 31.0292° 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.