Qibla Direction Finder
Find the accurate Qibla direction from your location. Great-circle bearings to the Kaaba, why compasses drift, and how to verify your prayer direction.
Finding your location...
The Qibla is the direction of the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque at Makkah, and facing it is a condition of a valid prayer for anyone who is able to determine it. The command is explicit in the Quran: Surah Al-Baqarah 2:144 instructs the Prophet, and every believer after him, to turn his face toward the Sacred Mosque wherever he may be. The finder above takes your coordinates and returns the bearing you should face, together with a live compass readout on devices that have a magnetometer.
How the Qibla bearing is calculated
There is only one correct answer and it is a piece of trigonometry, not a tradition. The bearing is the initial direction of the great circle — the shortest path over the Earth's surface — running from your position to the Kaaba at 21.4225°N, 39.8262°E. Because the Earth is a sphere, that path is not a straight line on a flat map: on a standard Mercator map the line to Makkah appears to bend, and the true compass bearing is often tens of degrees away from what a ruler on the map suggests.
The table below gives true-north great-circle bearings from a spread of cities, calculated from the Kaaba's published coordinates using the standard spherical bearing formula. Use it as a sanity check on your device — if your compass disagrees with this table by more than a few degrees indoors, the compass is wrong, not the table.
| City | Qibla bearing (true north) | Distance to Makkah |
|---|---|---|
| New York, USA | 58° (north-east) | ~10,300 km |
| Chicago, USA | 49° (north-east) | ~11,100 km |
| Los Angeles, USA | 24° (north-north-east) | ~13,400 km |
| Toronto, Canada | 55° (north-east) | ~10,500 km |
| London, UK | 119° (east-south-east) | ~4,800 km |
| Istanbul, Türkiye | 152° (south-east) | ~2,400 km |
| Dubai, UAE | 258° (west-south-west) | ~1,600 km |
| Karachi, Pakistan | 268° (west) | ~2,800 km |
| Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | 293° (west-north-west) | ~7,000 km |
| Jakarta, Indonesia | 295° (west-north-west) | ~7,900 km |
| Sydney, Australia | 277° (west) | ~13,300 km |
| Cape Town, South Africa | 23° (north-north-east) | ~6,600 km |
Why a compass reading drifts
A phone compass is a magnetometer, and magnetometers are easy to confuse. Almost every complaint about a "wrong" Qibla direction comes from one of the causes below rather than from the calculation itself. Notice that the bearing never changes — only your device's ability to report it does.
| What is interfering | How it shows up | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Metal near the phone — steel desks, radiators, door frames, car bodies | The needle lurches as you move the phone a few centimetres | Step 1-2 metres away from metal and read again |
| Electronics — speakers, laptops, magnetic cases and mounts | A steady offset of 20-40° that never settles | Remove the case or mount, then re-calibrate |
| Uncalibrated sensor | Accuracy reads "low" and the heading wanders | Move the phone in a figure-8 several times, then hold it flat |
| Magnetic north vs true north (declination) | A fixed regional error of several degrees | Use an app that applies declination, or fall back to a known landmark line |
| Weak GPS fix (indoors, underground) | Your assumed position can be kilometres off | Step outside, wait for a good fix, then re-open the finder |
| Reading the phone's screen edge instead of its top edge | A consistent 90° error | Point the top of the device along the arrow, not your thumb |
When the exact direction cannot be determined
Being inside a large building, below deck on a ship, or in a place with no compass and no obvious landmarks is a recognised situation, and the scholarly position across the schools is consistent: the obligation is to make a genuine effort to face the Kaaba, and where that is impossible, facing its general direction is sufficient. The Quran itself frames the matter through God's all-encompassing knowledge rather than through precision instruments — Surah Al-Baqarah 2:115 states that to Allah belong the east and the west. If you can, take a bearing before you go in and hold that line; if the direction is genuinely unknowable, pray towards your best estimate and do not repeat the prayer.
Two practical habits remove most disputes. First, fix a permanent marker in rooms you pray in regularly — a strip of tape on the carpet is enough once the bearing is known. Second, verify that bearing against a dependable external reference rather than against a second phone app: Surah Al-Baqarah 2:150 makes the direction a shared obligation of the whole community, so your local mosque's own prayer line is the best confirmation available. Community-maintained maps and satellite imagery are useful for this, and the wider halal living guides cover the surrounding practical questions.
Qibla in daily practice
Three situations come up constantly, and each is easier once the bearing is a number you actually know for your city:
- At work. Take the reading once, in the room you will use, and note it down. Office floors are full of steel and the compass will not be trustworthy there.
- Travelling. The bearing changes every time you change city — a 3,000 km flight can swing it by more than 90°. Re-run the finder after you land, and pair it with the prayer times calculator so both the direction and the window are correct. Our halal hotel guide covers what else to check in a room before you pray.
- At home. A single verified line serves for years. The Hijri date converter and the Ramadan calendar fill in the rest of the daily routine.