This UTM to lat long converter moves between geographic latitude and longitude and the Universal Transverse Mercator grid used on survey plans, GIS layers and setting-out sheets. Enter a position in decimal degrees or DMS to get its zone, easting and northing — or paste UTM coordinates from a plan and get the latitude and longitude back. The batch tab converts a whole pasted coordinate list at once and exports it as CSV. Everything runs in your browser, with no login and no upload.
Decimal degrees or DMS both work: 43.642567, N 43 38 33.2 or 43 38 33.2 N.
UTM divides the world into 60 zones, each six degrees of longitude wide, numbered from 1 at 180°W to 60 at 180°E. Every zone is projected separately with a transverse Mercator projection onto a cylinder touching the ellipsoid along the zone's central meridian. Inside a zone, a position is given as an easting measured east from a false origin 500,000 m west of the central meridian, and a northing measured north from the equator. The southern hemisphere adds 10,000,000 m to the northing so the values stay positive.
The projection scale is exactly 0.9996 on the central meridian and rises to about 1.0004 near a zone edge, which is why a UTM distance is slightly longer than the same line measured on the ground. This converter uses the published transverse Mercator series on the WGS84 ellipsoid and solves the inverse by iteration, so a forward-and-back conversion returns the original position to better than a millimetre.
Two areas use non-standard zones. Norway keeps zone 32 across 56°N to 64°N so the country is not split, and Svalbard widens zones 31, 33, 35 and 37 between 72°N and 84°N. This converter applies both exceptions automatically.
A UTM coordinate is written as a zone, an easting and a northing, all in metres. The easting is the distance measured east from a false origin that sits 500,000 m west of the zone's central meridian — the false easting — so that no point inside a zone ever carries a negative number. The northing is the distance north of the equator, with 10,000,000 m of false northing added in the southern hemisphere to keep the values positive. That is why a valid easting almost always falls between about 100,000 m and 900,000 m.
To convert easting northing to latitude longitude you also need the zone and the hemisphere,
because the same metre pair describes a different place in every zone. This northing easting
converter projects the point back onto the WGS84 ellipsoid and returns both decimal degrees and
DMS. Grid coordinates are conventionally quoted easting first, as in
630084.301 E, 4833438.586 N, zone 17N, but swapping the order makes no difference
to the answer. If your coordinates are already a military grid reference, the
MGRS to lat long converter handles that format directly.
If you are asking "what UTM zone am I in?", the answer follows from longitude alone: the world is divided into 60 six-degree bands, numbered from zone 1 at 180°W, so dividing your longitude by six gives the zone. Because the number changes exactly at the zone edge, a point sitting on a boundary can legitimately be described in either of the two neighbouring zones, which is a frequent cause of coordinates that refuse to line up on a plan.
This page also works as a UTM zone finder. Enter a latitude and longitude and the zone, hemisphere and latitude band come back with the grid coordinates; for a local project you can instead set the zone by hand and read the position back, which is useful when a drawing quotes the zone explicitly. The central meridian — the line on which the projection scale is exactly 0.9996 — is shown in both directions, so you can sanity-check the result before using it.
A UTM coordinate only means something together with the datum it was computed on. WGS84 is the global datum used by GPS, by most modern GNSS receivers and by this converter, with a semi-major axis of 6,378,137 m and a flattening of 1/298.257223563. NAD83 is the datum used on North American mapping; it is tied to the North American plate and currently differs from WGS84 by roughly one to two metres, which is immaterial for navigation but can matter for property, boundary and engineering work. CGCS2000 is the datum used on Chinese official mapping and is defined to coincide with ITRF97 at epoch 2000.0, so for ordinary civilian work it agrees with WGS84 to within a few centimetres.
A datum shift is a small correction rather than a different projection. Converting NAD83 to WGS84 or WGS84 to NAD83 is normally done with a published transformation set, and a CGCS2000 to WGS84 conversion is effectively a no-op unless you need sub-decimetre accuracy. The same logic applies to ITRF to WGS84, where the differences come mainly from the reference epoch and from the plate motion accumulated since each frame was defined. If your plan carries an older datum such as NAD27, ED50 or a national grid with its own parameters, convert through that datum first — otherwise the grid coordinates produced here can be out by hundreds of metres.
A UTM conversion is usually needed when the coordinate format you hold differs from the one your equipment, plan or software expects:
The two single-point tabs handle one coordinate at a time. The Batch (CSV) tab handles the list: paste a column of coordinates copied out of a spreadsheet, a GNSS export or a CSV file and every row is converted in one pass, ready to copy back or download as CSV.
Three directions are supported. Latitude and longitude to UTM adds the zone, band, easting and
northing to each row. UTM to latitude and longitude runs the other way, taking easting, northing
and zone from the row. MGRS to latitude and longitude reads grid references with or without the
spaces — 17T PJ 30084 33438 and 17TPJ3008433438 are the same
reference.
If the paste carries a header row the columns are matched by name, so the order does not matter.
latitude, longitude, easting, northing,
zone, hemisphere, x, y and mgrs
are all recognised, and any other column is carried through as a label. Without a header row the
columns are read by shape: the last two coordinate values on the line are taken as the pair, and
anything before them — a point number, a description — becomes the label.
| Pasted line | How it is read |
|---|---|
P12, 630084.301, 4833438.586, 17N | label P12; easting 630084.301; northing 4833438.586; zone 17 north |
Stone 4, 43.642567, -79.387139 | label, then latitude and longitude, comma separated |
43.642567 -79.387139 | a bare pair separated only by a space reads as latitude then longitude |
N 43 38 33.2 W 79 38 33.2 | DMS with hemisphere letters still counts as one record |
17TPJ3008433438 | an MGRS reference, in the MGRS direction |
Two details are worth knowing. A zone is read from a row only when it is written with a letter —
17N, 33S, 17T — because a bare number in that position is
far more likely to be a point number; rows that carry none take the zone from the
Default zone box, and the resolved zone is printed on every output row so a wrong
assumption is visible immediately. And if a UTM pair is written in the unconventional
northing-then-easting order, the converter spots it from the magnitudes, since a UTM easting
never exceeds about 900,000 m.
Bad rows are never allowed to poison the run. They are counted, the first few are named with their line numbers, and the remainder of the list still converts. Up to 2,000 records are processed in a single pass and the table on screen shows the first 200; the download always contains every converted row.
As with the single-point tabs, the whole conversion runs in the browser. A client's coordinate schedule never leaves the machine, which matters when the file describes private land or critical infrastructure.
Switch to the "UTM → latitude / longitude" tab, enter the easting, northing, zone and hemisphere, and the converter returns latitude and longitude in both decimal degrees and DMS. A valid easting lies between about 100,000 m and 900,000 m, and a southern-hemisphere northing must include the 10,000,000 m false northing exactly as printed on the plan.
Enter the latitude and longitude in decimal degrees or DMS. The converter works out the UTM zone from the longitude, projects the position onto that zone's transverse Mercator plane and returns the easting and northing in metres, plus the zone and hemisphere. For example, latitude 43.642567 and longitude -79.387139 returns zone 17N with easting 630084.301 m and northing 4833438.586 m.
The zone is determined by longitude: zone 1 covers 180 degrees west to 174 degrees west, and each six-degree band increases the zone number eastwards, so longitude 0 to 6 degrees east is zone 31. To convert UTM back to latitude and longitude you must supply the zone, because the same easting and northing pair means a different place in every zone.
WGS84, with a semi-major axis of 6378137 m and a flattening of 1/298.257223563. This is the datum used by GPS and most modern GNSS equipment. If your plan was produced on an older local datum such as NAD27, ED50 or a national grid with its own parameters, the result will differ by up to a few hundred metres and you should convert through that datum first.
A point inside its own zone always has an easting between about 100,000 m and 900,000 m. Values outside that range mean the coordinate was projected in a different zone from the one you entered, or that the point is far from the zone's central meridian. The converter still returns a latitude and longitude, but check the zone before using the result.
Latitude and longitude are angular positions on the ellipsoid and are independent of any projection. UTM is a plane coordinate system: it converts the curved surface into metres of easting and northing inside one six-degree zone, which makes distance and area arithmetic simpler but means coordinates are only valid in that zone.
It is completely free with no login, no account and no usage limit. All calculations run locally in your browser, so no coordinate is ever sent to a server.
Easting is the distance in metres east of the zone's false origin, which is placed 500,000 m west of the central meridian so that the value stays positive. Northing is the distance in metres north of the equator, plus a 10,000,000 m false northing in the southern hemisphere. Together with the zone they give a unique position on the grid.
They are very close but not identical. WGS84 is the global GPS datum; NAD83 is the North American datum and moves with the North American plate, so the two currently differ by about one to two metres. For mapping and navigation the difference is negligible, but for boundary, cadastral and precise engineering work convert through an official transformation set rather than treating the two as interchangeable.
Yes — use the Batch (CSV) tab. Paste the list, one record per line, choose the direction, and every row is converted in a single pass. Up to 2,000 records are handled at once, the on-screen table shows the first 200, and the Download CSV button always writes every converted row.
Copy the cells and paste them straight into the batch box; the converter accepts comma, tab, semicolon and pipe separators. If the first line is a header row it is detected and skipped, and the remaining columns are then matched by name, so latitude, longitude, easting, northing, zone and hemisphere are found wherever they sit in the row. Any unrecognised column is carried through as a label.
Easting first, northing second, which is the conventional grid order. If a file has them the other way round the converter still reads the pair correctly, because a UTM easting never exceeds about 900,000 m while a northing routinely reaches several million — the magnitudes give the order away. Naming the columns in a header row removes the ambiguity entirely.
Calculations run locally in your browser. Verify critical values against your project's coordinate reference system and specification before use in the field. About · Privacy & cookies · Terms of use · Developers