Geohash to Lat/Lon Converter

How it is calculated

A geohash is a string in a base-32 alphabet (digits 0-9 and letters b-z except a, i, l and o). Each character carries 5 bits. The bits alternate between longitude and latitude, starting with longitude, and each bit halves the current range: a 1 keeps the upper half and a 0 the lower half. The tool starts with latitude −90 to 90 and longitude −180 to 180 and applies every bit. The decoded point is the centre of the final cell, and the error is half of the cell's height and width: error = (max − min) ÷ 2, shown in degrees to six decimals. Input is case-insensitive and surrounding spaces are trimmed, but any other character outside the alphabet (including a space or slash inside the text) makes the tool return nothing. The longer the geohash, the smaller the cell; the result is the centre of a rectangle, not the exact original point.

Common mistakes

• Treating the result as the exact point. It is the centre of a cell, and a 5-character geohash is only accurate to a couple of kilometres, as the error line shows.
• Typing a geohash containing a, i, l or o, which are not in the alphabet. The tool gives no result; a letter like that is usually a typing error (0 vs o, 1 vs l).
• Assuming the error is the same in both directions. For a 5-character hash both are ± 0.021973°, but a 6-character hash gives ± 0.002747° lat and ± 0.005493° lon, because the cell is twice as wide as it is tall at even lengths.
• Comparing two nearby places by their shared prefix alone. Points just across a cell boundary can have totally different geohashes even if they are metres apart.
• Copying a geohash from a URL together with extra characters (such as a trailing slash or a quote). Only the characters of the hash itself are allowed, so the tool shows no result.