Free Online Map Area Calculator – Measure Land Area on a Map

A map area calculator measures land without a tape: you trace the boundary of a plot, a field or a whole farm on a satellite map, and it works out the enclosed area, usually in seconds. This free land area calculator does it on the earth's real surface, so the answer comes out in acres, square feet, hectares, square metres, guntha and the local units of your state, and it is ready to save, share or print.

How to Calculate Land Area Using a Map

Every corner you click on the map has a latitude and a longitude. Join the corners in order and you have a polygon; its area is the land inside it. The part that needs care is the maths. A map on a screen is flat, but the ground is part of a curved earth, and the popular web-map projection (Web Mercator) stretches everything the further you move from the equator. Multiply pixels by a scale and you overstate the area: at Delhi's latitude a square looks about 30% bigger on the map than it really is, and at Ankleshwar's about 16%.

This calculator avoids that. It converts the corners to an equal-area projection of the WGS84 ellipsoid (the shape of the earth that GPS uses), measures the polygon there, and lays long sides along the curve of the earth. We checked it against GeographicLib, the reference geodesy library, on plots from 10 metres to over 100 kilometres across, including one that crosses the 180th meridian: the areas agreed to better than 0.00001%. What decides the accuracy of your answer is therefore not the maths but the map under your finger, which is why the section on accuracy below matters.

The perimeter is the length of the boundary along the same curved surface, side by side, including the closing side from the last corner back to the first. It is useful for fencing, compound walls and boundary surveys.

How to Use Our Map Area Calculator

1. Find the land. Type a village, town, address or landmark in the search box and press Search. You can also paste coordinates (21.70, 72.99) or a Google Maps link, or press My location to start where you are.
2. Switch to Satellite and zoom in. Zoom until you can see the edges of the plot: fences, walls, field bunds, roads, tree lines. The closer you zoom, the more exactly you can place a corner.
3. Press Start drawing and click each corner of the land in order, going around once. On a phone, tap the corners, or move the map until the cross sits on the corner and press Add here, which keeps your finger from hiding the spot. For a rectangular plot, pick Rectangle (or Square) above the toolbar: click two corners for one side, then click once more for the width.
4. Press Finish, or click the first corner again. The shape closes and the area and perimeter appear straight away.
5. Adjust it. Drag a corner to move it. Drag a small dot between two corners to add a corner. Click a corner and press Delete corner to remove it. Undo and Redo step through your changes. While you place or drag a corner, its side snaps square, parallel or equal to the sides already drawn; untick Snap lines to place it freely.
6. Read, save or share. Choose the unit you want as the main figure, pick your state for local units, then download a PDF, KML or GeoJSON file, print the sheet, or copy a link that reopens the same drawing.

Land often comes in pieces. Use Add parcel to draw another plot beside the first, and the calculator shows each parcel's area and the total. If you only have a figure and no map, the area converter turns it into every other unit.

Features of Our Online Land Area Calculator

• Search any place. Villages, cities, addresses, coordinates and Google Maps links, with a street map and a satellite view.
• Irregular shapes. Any number of corners, up to 400, so a curved field edge or an L-shaped plot is traced as exactly as you like.
• Rectangles and squares. Draw one with three clicks, or type a length and width (or an area) and place it on the map, then move and turn it to see whether a building, shed or plot of that size fits your land.
• Snap lines. A corner snaps so that its side is square (90°) or parallel to a side already drawn, or the same length as one, which makes a regular plot quick to trace exactly.
• Live results. The area and perimeter update as you click, and again each time you move, add or delete a corner.
• Twelve-plus units. Square feet, square metres, square yards, acres, hectares, square kilometres and miles, guntha and cents, and your state's bigha, kanal, marla or ropani where it has one.
• Side lengths, angles and coordinates. Each side is labelled in metres or feet together with its bearing from true north (N63°E is 63° east of north), the angle between the two sides is written at every corner, and every corner shows its latitude and longitude.
• Several parcels. Measure up to ten separate plots in one go.
• Downloads. A PDF report with a scale sketch of the boundary, every side length and corner angle, and the area in every unit, a KML file for Google Earth and Google My Maps, a GeoJSON file for GIS software, and a print sheet.
• Shareable links. The drawing is stored in the link itself, after the # sign, so nothing is saved on our servers and the link works anywhere.
• Built for phones. Large touch handles, a floating toolbar, a full-screen map and the Add here button.

Land Area Measurement Units Explained

Square feet, square metres, square yards, acres and hectares have fixed international definitions, so they are the same everywhere. The guntha (1/40 acre) and the cent (1/100 acre) are defined from the acre, so they are fixed too. These are the conversions you will use most:

Other Indian units depend on where the land is. A bigha, vigha, kanal, marla, katha or nali is a local custom that changed from state to state and often from district to district, so this tool never treats them as universal. They appear only after you pick a state under "Local land units for", and each value carries a label: Fixed where the definition itself settles it, Usual for the value generally used in that state's records, and Varies where districts differ and the figure is only a guide. The values are the same ones the area converter uses, each taken from a revenue glossary, land records manual, court judgment or gazetteer. Nepal's ropani (5,476 sq ft) and Terai bigha are included too.

If your village measures a unit differently, open "Use my own local unit" and enter how many square feet one unit holds. The calculator then shows your area in that unit, marked as your own value.

How to Calculate Land Area in Acres

An acre is exactly 43,560 square feet, or 4,046.8564224 square metres, or 40 guntha. Divide your area in square feet by 43,560, your area in square metres by 4,046.86, or multiply hectares by 2.4711. The calculator does this for you, but the arithmetic is worth knowing as a check.

Take a rectangular plot that is 100 ft by 250 ft. That is 25,000 sq ft, which is 2,322.58 sq m, 0.5739 acres or 0.2323 hectares. Here are common acreages in the other units:

On the map you do not need the formula: draw the plot, then choose Acres as the main unit. For farmland, remember that revenue records usually write the area in hectares and ares (Gujarat and Maharashtra) or in local units, so compare like with like before comparing prices.

How Accurate Is Map-Based Land Measurement?

Good enough to plan, compare and negotiate; not good enough to settle a boundary. The calculation is accurate. What limits you is the picture and your hand:

• Image position. Satellite images are corrected to fit the ground, but they can sit a few metres off, more in hills and on very recent changes. Compare the corners with something you know, such as a road junction.
• Zoom. At the closest level the satellite pictures come in (zoom 18), one screen pixel covers roughly half a metre. Zoom in before you place each corner.
• Visible boundaries. Walls, fences and bunds show up; a line that exists only on paper does not. Where the edge is not visible, the map cannot see it.
• Size matters less than you think, and more than you want. A 1 m slip along one side of a 100 m by 100 m plot changes the area by 100 sq m, or 1%. A small plot is more sensitive than a large field.

For a purchase, lease, loan, mutation or dispute, rely on the area in the title documents and land records, or on a survey by a licensed surveyor. Use this tool to check that a claimed area is plausible, to estimate, and to brief the surveyor.

Who Can Use This Land Area Calculator?

• Landowners and farmers checking a field's acreage, estimating seed, fertiliser or fencing, or comparing it with the record.
• Real estate agents and brokers confirming the size of a plot before they list it or quote a rate per square foot.
• Property developers and construction companies sizing a site, estimating the buildable area and sharing the outline with their team as a KML file.
• Warehouse and industrial property owners measuring the plot around a shed, yard space or an expansion area. If you are choosing space rather than measuring it, the warehouse for rent and industrial warehouse pages explain what Farbe Enterprise arranges, and the CBM calculator works out how much room your cargo needs.
• Architects and civil engineers taking a first site area and perimeter before the survey drawing arrives.
• Surveyors using it as a quick desk check of a measured area.

All three free tools sit together on the free tools page: this map calculator, the area converter and the CBM calculator.

Frequently Asked Questions

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