Lat Long to UTM Converter

A UTM coordinate locates a point with a zone number (1 to 60), a hemisphere (N or S), an easting and a northing in metres. Together, for example "17N 630084 4833438", they pin a point to about a metre on the ground.

Zone = floor((longitude + 180) / 6) + 1. Zone 1 covers 180 W to 174 W and numbering increases eastward to zone 60 (174 E to 180 E). Each zone's central meridian is at longitude = zone x 6 - 183 degrees.

Easting is the x distance in metres measured eastward from a false origin 500,000 m west of the zone's central meridian. Northing is the y distance in metres measured northward from the equator (or from 10,000,000 m south of the equator in the southern hemisphere).

The 500,000 m "false easting" guarantees every easting inside a zone is positive, so nobody has to handle negative coordinates. A point exactly on the central meridian therefore always reads 500,000 m easting.

The 10,000,000 m "false northing" keeps southern hemisphere northings positive: they read 10,000,000 m at the equator and decrease southward to about 1,116,915 m at 80 S. Northern hemisphere northings simply start at 0 m on the equator.

The central meridian of each UTM zone is given a scale of 0.9996 instead of 1. This deliberate shrink keeps scale distortion under 1 part in 1,000 everywhere inside the zone: distances along the central meridian read 0.04 percent short, and distortion grows toward the zone edges.

WGS84, the datum used by GPS. UTM coordinates are datum-dependent: the same lat/long on NAD27 or another old datum can produce eastings and northings that differ by up to 200 metres, so confirm the datum before mixing sources.

The math is a standard Transverse Mercator series accurate to a fraction of a millimetre inside a zone. The engine was cross-checked against the worked examples on Wikipedia and movable-type.co.uk and against published zone-boundary values, agreeing to within 1 metre (their rounding).

No. False easting (500,000 m) and false northing (10,000,000 m in the southern hemisphere) exist precisely so every valid UTM coordinate is positive. A negative easting or northing means the input is invalid or belongs to a different grid system.

UTM covers 84 N to 80 S. The polar regions outside that range use the Universal Polar Stereographic (UPS) system instead, so this converter rejects latitudes beyond those limits.

Two common reasons. First, a point exactly on a zone boundary belongs to the zone to its east by the standard formula (for example, longitude 18.0 E falls in zone 34, not 33). Second, Norway and Svalbard have official widened zones that this converter intentionally does not apply; it uses standard 6-degree zones everywhere.

MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) is built on top of UTM: it takes the same zone, easting and northing, then replaces the raw numbers with a latitude band letter, 100 km square letters, and truncated digits. UTM is the underlying numeric grid; MGRS is a compact textual shorthand for it.

Use UTM for mapping, surveying, GIS analysis, and field work inside one zone, because distances and areas come straight from the metre grid. Keep latitude and longitude for global datasets, GPS data exchange, aviation, and anything spanning multiple zones or the poles.

Usually one of three things: the other tool rounds to whole metres (this one shows millimetres), it uses a different datum than WGS84, or it applies the Norway/Svalbard zone exceptions. Within one zone on WGS84, reputable converters agree to the millimetre.

Yes. Use the "UTM to Lat/Long" tab: enter zone, hemisphere, easting and northing, and you get decimal latitude and longitude back. Forward plus reverse is a lossless round trip to better than a nanodegree.