Where am I right now?

Where am I? Everything about this spot, from one tap

Where am I right now? Tap Find me and this page answers in plain terms: the street address you are nearest to, the city or town, the county, the state, the ZIP code, your latitude and longitude, and the height of the ground under you above sea level. They appear together, on road-sign style panels you can read at a glance, with a copy button beside each line and a map below.

Most location sites answer one of those questions per page, so finding your county and your ZIP code and your elevation means three visits and three permission prompts. Here, one lookup covers all of them. If you would rather not share your position, type an address, a town, a ZIP code or a pair of coordinates into the search box and get the same answers for that place.

How the page works out where you are

When you tap Find me, your browser asks your phone or computer for its position. A phone outdoors uses satellites and is usually accurate to within about 5 metres. Indoors, and on laptops, the position comes from nearby Wi-Fi networks and phone towers, which is looser. The Accuracy row tells you how far off the reading might be, so you know how much to trust the house number.

The page then does three lookups, straight from your browser. OpenStreetMap turns your coordinates into an address, including the city, county, state and postcode. A public elevation dataset, built mainly from USGS survey data in the United States, gives the height of the ground. And OpenStreetMap's map tiles draw the area around you. Tap anywhere on the map to check a different spot.

Private by design

This site has no accounts and no database, and your location never passes through a server of ours. Your browser talks to the map and elevation services directly and the result stays on your screen. Nothing is saved when you close the page. If you copy a share link, the coordinates are in the link itself, so only the people you send it to can see them.

What people use it for

• Giving an exact address to a taxi, a tow truck or a delivery driver when you are somewhere unfamiliar.
• Checking which county you are in for a weather warning, a burn ban, a jury summons or a hunting licence.
• Finding your ZIP code for a form while travelling or right after a move.
• Looking up the elevation of your kitchen for canning times or high-altitude baking.
• Copying GPS coordinates for a campsite, a trailhead, a geocache or a drone flight.
• Working out which town or state you have just crossed into on a road trip.
• Sending a friend a link to exactly where you parked or where to meet.

Reading the signs

The green sign shows the place you are in, with the city or town in large type and the county and state underneath, the way a highway guide sign names the next destination. The white shield holds the ZIP code. The brown sign is your elevation: feet first in the United States, metres elsewhere. Below them, the rows give the full address, your coordinates in decimal degrees and in degrees, minutes and seconds, your device's own GPS altitude when it reports one, the accuracy of the fix, and your speed if you are moving.

The elevation on the brown sign is the ground height from a survey model, not your phone's altitude reading. Phone GPS is noticeably weaker at height than at position, and many devices measure height from a mathematical ellipsoid rather than sea level, which can put the reading 30 metres or more out. Showing both lets you see the difference; the GPS altitude guide explains it.

When the answer looks wrong

If the town is wrong, your device is almost certainly estimating from the network. Turn on precise location for your browser, switch off any VPN and step outside. If the pin is right but the house number is a neighbour's, the nearest mapped address simply belongs to the building next door; the coordinates are still exact. And if the city differs from the one on your mail, that is usually because mailing addresses use the post office's name for an area, not city limits. See why your location is wrong and why your address says a different city.

One question at a time

Every tool page below runs the same lookup, with the answer you asked for leading:

• My location: Tap Find me to see your current location as an address, a map pin and a set of coordinates you can copy or share.
• What is my address: Tap Find me to get the street address of the spot you are standing on, ready to copy into a form, a message or a delivery app.
• What is my ZIP code: Tap Find me and the ZIP code for the spot you are on appears in the shield, with the city, county and street address beside it.
• What county am I in: Tap Find me and the county you are in right now appears on the sign, with the city and state underneath.
• What city am I in: Tap Find me and the city or town you are in appears on the sign, with the county and state below it.
• What state am I in: Tap Find me and the state you are in appears on the sign, along with the city and county.
• My coordinates: Tap Find me to see your latitude and longitude in both common formats, with copy buttons and a share link.
• What is my elevation: Tap Find me to see how high the ground under you is above sea level, in feet and metres, from a survey-grade elevation model.
• What altitude am I at: Tap Find me to see your altitude two ways: the ground elevation under you, and the altitude your device's GPS reports.
• Elevation finder: Type an address, a town, a ZIP code or coordinates to see the ground elevation there, or tap the map to check any spot.

For background, the guides cover allowing location access, reading coordinates, sharing your location safely and the difference between elevation and altitude.