Find the Qibla direction to the Kaaba in Makkah with ease. Use our online Qibla Finder and Qibla compass to find the accurate direction from your location and know where to face for your prayers.
Tap below to detect your location and find the Qibla direction.
You can allow location access for a live reading, or search for any city by name if you would rather not share your location. The direction is worked out using the same method astronomers and navigators use to find the shortest path between two points on a globe, so it stays accurate wherever you are — at home, traveling, or standing in a new city for the first time.
The fastest way to check your direction is to allow location access at the top of this page. Once you do, the tool reads your exact coordinates and calculates a live reading that points straight toward the Kaaba. You do not need to type in your city or work out your coordinates by hand. As you move or turn your phone, the arrow updates so it always points the right way.
This works because your phone combines two pieces of information. The GPS chip tells the tool exactly where you are on Earth. The magnetometer, a small sensor built into almost every smartphone, tells the tool which way your phone is currently facing. Together, these two readings are enough to calculate your direction within a fraction of a degree, without any manual input from you.
Your location is only used to calculate the direction and is not stored. A live reading is especially useful for travelers, since your prayer direction changes as you move between cities and countries — sometimes by a large amount over a short distance.
If you would rather not share your location, or you are planning ahead for a trip, you can search by city name instead. This gives you a fixed angle for that location rather than a live reading — useful for travel planning, mosque construction projects, or simply checking the correct direction before you arrive somewhere new.
An online qibla compass works the same way a traditional compass does, except it points toward the Kaaba instead of magnetic north. To use it correctly, hold your phone flat and level with the ground, and keep it away from metal objects, speakers, laptops, and other electronics that can interfere with the built-in compass sensor.
If your reading looks off, calibrate your compass first. Move your phone slowly in a figure-eight pattern several times, away from anything metal. This resets the magnetometer and clears out small errors that build up from nearby interference. Most qibla finders, including this one, will prompt you to calibrate automatically if the reading seems unstable or keeps jumping around.
A standard compass points to magnetic north, not true north, and the two are rarely the same. The difference between them is called magnetic declination. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), declination can shift by several degrees within just a few hundred miles, and it also changes slowly over time as the Earth's magnetic field moves. A tool that ignores this correction can be off by several degrees, which adds up to a real error over long distances. This tool applies the correction automatically, so the reading you see already accounts for it.
If the direction looks wrong, the most common cause is a permissions issue or an uncalibrated sensor. First, check that your browser has permission to access your location and your device's motion and orientation sensors, usually found in your phone's privacy settings. Then recalibrate using the figure-eight method described above, away from metal furniture, other phones, or laptops.
Wherever you are praying from, the qibla points to one fixed location — the Kaaba, inside Masjid al-Haram in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the qibla is the direction Muslims turn toward five times a day during salah, the daily ritual prayer, and it is also used for burial and other religious practices. The destination itself never changes. What changes is the angle you need to face, since that depends entirely on where you are standing on Earth.
The Kaaba sits at approximately 21.4225° north and 39.8262° east. Every direction calculation, including the one this tool uses, treats these coordinates as the fixed destination. Your direction is worked out along a great circle — the shortest path between two points on a sphere. This is the same math used to plot flight paths, which is why a flight from London to Jeddah curves south through Europe instead of heading straight east on a flat map. Muslim astronomers used a similar approach centuries ago, working out these calculations by hand and compiling tables that listed the correct direction for cities across the Islamic world.
| City | Country | Qibla angle (from true north) | Approx. distance to Kaaba |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | United States | 58.5° | 6,150 mi |
| London | United Kingdom | 118.9° | 3,260 mi |
| Istanbul | Türkiye | 151.1° | 1,590 mi |
| Jakarta | Indonesia | 295.1° | 4,970 mi |
| Karachi | Pakistan | 266.3° | 1,730 mi |
| Lagos | Nigeria | 66.5° | 3,190 mi |
| Toronto | Canada | 56.8° | 6,320 mi |
| Sydney | Australia | 277.5° | 7,880 mi |
| Dubai | United Arab Emirates | 258.6° | 830 mi |
| Cairo | Egypt | 136.2° | 930 mi |
Because your direction depends on your exact location, there is no single answer that works for everyone. In much of the United States and Canada, it points northeast. In the United Kingdom and much of Western Europe, it points southeast. In Pakistan and much of South Asia, it points west. These are only general patterns. Use the table above, or allow location access at the top of this page, for your exact angle rather than relying on a general rule.
Facing the right direction is only part of the daily routine — you can also look up accurate prayer times for your location or check today’s date on the Islamic (Hijri) calendar.
Many people search for a qibla finder app assuming they need to download something, but a browser-based tool can do the same job without taking up storage space, asking for updates, or showing ads. This tool works directly in your phone or computer's browser, uses live GPS, and corrects for magnetic declination automatically — the same features you would look for in a paid app.
| Feature | This tool (browser) | Phone's built-in compass | Downloaded app |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works without download | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | — No |
| Automatic GPS direction | ✓ Yes | — No | Varies |
| Magnetic declination correction | ✓ Yes | — No | Varies |
| Distance to Kaaba shown | ✓ Yes | — No | Varies |
| Works offline once loaded | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Permissions setup required | Minimal | None | Often extensive |
A calculated direction is more reliable than guessing or asking someone nearby, since it is based on your exact coordinates rather than someone else’s memory or a rough estimate. A plain compass can still work well, but only if you already know the correct angle to align it to — which is exactly what a calculation like this one gives you.
Qibla is an Arabic word that simply means direction. In Islam, it refers specifically to the direction Muslims face during prayer, toward the Kaaba in Makkah. The word appears throughout Islamic scholarship and daily life, and it is sometimes spelled qiblah, kibla, or kible depending on the language and region searching for it.
Islamic scholars generally accept two levels of precision. Facing the Kaaba with exact precision is preferred when possible, but facing in its general direction is accepted when exact precision cannot be confirmed, particularly for people praying far from Makkah. This is one reason small differences between tools rarely cause concern in practice.
In South Asia, Iran, and Türkiye, the five daily prayers are often called namaz rather than salah, and people frequently search for namaz direction instead of qibla direction. Both terms describe exactly the same thing — the direction toward the Kaaba that you face during prayer — just using different regional vocabulary.
The qibla was not always Makkah. According to Britannica, early Muslims first prayed facing Jerusalem, a direction likely influenced by Jewish tradition at the time. The direction was later changed to the Kaaba in Makkah, a shift recorded in the Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 144. This change took place around the second year after the Hijrah, the migration of the Prophet Muhammad from Makkah to Madinah.
Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem remains Islam’s third holiest site, after the mosques in Makkah and Madinah, according to Britannica. It is still remembered today as the first qibla in Islamic history, and some mosques built before the direction changed still show a mihrab, the wall niche marking prayer direction, oriented toward Jerusalem rather than Makkah.
Yes, but only once. After the change described above, the qibla has remained fixed on the Kaaba ever since. What has changed over the centuries is the accuracy of the tools used to calculate it — from early astronomical tables compiled by hand to GPS-based tools like this one, which can calculate the correct angle in seconds from anywhere on Earth.
Those same principles guide every tool we build — read more about how FindDeen Guides works.
This tool calculates your direction in three steps. Each step matters — skipping the third is the most common reason two different tools can show slightly different results for the same location.
These two sensors do different jobs. GPS determines where you are on Earth. The magnetometer determines which way your phone is currently pointing. A small GPS error usually has little effect on your result, since GPS is accurate to a few meters on most modern phones. An uncalibrated magnetometer is the more common reason a reading looks wrong, which is why calibration matters more than most people expect.
This tool is part of a growing set of daily-practice tools. Prayer Times shows accurate prayer timings for your location, and the Islamic Calendar gives today’s Hijri date, a date converter, and the full year with Ramadan, Eid, and Hajj dates.