How fast am I going?
Press Start, allow location, and the number on the screen is your speed. That's the whole page. No graph, no map, no settings to work through first. Just the biggest clearest readout on this site, because you're probably reading it at a glance.
It uses your phone's satellite receiver, so it works in a car, on a bike, on a train, on a boat or on foot.
Why isn't it the same as my dashboard?
If you're in a car, this will almost certainly read lower than the dial in front of you. Both are behaving correctly.
Car speedometers legally can't read low, and they're allowed to read up to 10% plus 4 km/h high. Carmakers use that. A dashboard showing 100 usually means a real 94 to 97. GPS is the closer of the two, within one to three km/h under a clear sky.
When will the answer be wrong?
Satellite positioning fails in a small number of predictable ways. If the number looks wrong, it's almost certainly one of these:
- You're indoors, in a tunnel or in a car park. No satellites, no reading. Your phone might fall back to Wi-Fi positioning, which is accurate to tens of metres and useless for speed.
- You just started. A cold fix takes twenty to thirty seconds outdoors, longer if you've travelled a long way since you last used GPS.
- You're between tall buildings. Signals bounce off the walls and arrive late, which reads as speed that never happened.
- You just accelerated hard. You get about one reading a second, so a fast launch shows up slightly late.
- Your phone is in your pocket, or flat in a cupholder, where it can barely see the sky.
The Accuracy figure is the honest check. Under ±10 m the reading is solid. Above ±50 m your phone isn't using satellites at all and nothing on screen means much.
How fast is that, really?
| Speed | What it is |
|---|---|
| 5 km/h | Walking pace |
| 12 km/h | A comfortable jog |
| 25 km/h | Cycling on the flat |
| 30 km/h | A residential street |
| 50 km/h | An urban limit |
| 100 km/h | A dual carriageway |
| 130 km/h | A European motorway |
| 300 km/h | High-speed rail |
| 900 km/h | An airliner cruising |
Want more than the number?
This page is deliberately bare. If you want a car-style dial, a speed graph, a trace of your route or per-kilometre splits, the other pages have them. Try the GPS speedometer for everything at once, or one of the activity pages set up for what you're doing.
Don't read this while driving
Start it before you set off, put the phone in a mount, and let a passenger read it if you need a number mid-journey. A glance at 100 km/h means covering thirty metres blind.
Frequently asked questions
How fast am I going right now?
Press Start and allow location. Within twenty or thirty seconds outdoors you'll have a fix, and the number on screen is your current speed over the ground.
Is it accurate?
Under open sky, to within about one to three km/h. Better than the dial in a car. Indoors, in tunnels or between tall buildings it gets bad fast. Watch the accuracy figure.
Why is it lower than my car's speedometer?
Car speedometers can never read low and are allowed to read 10% plus 4 km/h high. Carmakers use that allowance. GPS is the closer of the two to your real speed.
Does it need internet?
Only to load the first time. After that the page is saved to your phone, and speed comes from satellites rather than the network, so it works with no signal.
Do you store my location?
No. Everything is worked out in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.