turf.distance
What is turf.distance?
turf.distance returns the geodesic distance between two Point features using the haversine formula. The result is a number in the requested units — kilometers by default. It is accurate enough for almost all consumer mapping use-cases and is the fastest way to measure point-to-point distance in browser or Node.js code.
turf.distance(from, to, options?) → numberOptions include:
units—'kilometers'(default),'meters','miles','nauticalmiles','radians','degrees'
When would you use turf.distance?
Use turf.distance for any point-to-point measurement — showing how far a pin is from a user's location, filtering POIs within N kilometers, or computing speed from successive GPS fixes. It is also a building block for nearest-neighbour lookups when you do not need a full spatial index.
In Node.js ETL, turf.distance is ideal for sanity-checking imported coordinates ("is this address really near the geocoded match?") or for computing simple distance attributes during feature hydration.
undefinedFAQs
How accurate is haversine versus Vincenty?
Haversine treats the Earth as a perfect sphere (radius 6371 km) and is accurate to within ~0.5% for most distances. If you need sub-metre accuracy across thousands of kilometres, use a Vincenty or geographiclib implementation instead; for UI and analytical work, turf.distance is almost always sufficient.
What does the `'degrees'` unit mean?
It returns the central angle in degrees subtended at Earth's centre between the two points. This is useful for algorithms working in angular units but rarely for user-facing distance display.
How do I install just distance?
npm install @turf/distance. It depends only on @turf/helpers and @turf/invariant, so it is a lightweight pick for interactive mapping apps.
How do I measure the length of a whole line?
Use turf.length for a LineString or MultiLineString — it sums haversine distances segment by segment. For point-to-line distance, use turf.pointToLineDistance.
