Distances From San Francisco, California

By the Miles Between Cities Editorial Team  ·  Last updated: October 2026

This hub collects every distance we publish from San Francisco, California to the other major cities in our index, in one table, measured the same way every time. San Francisco sits at 37.7272 degrees north and 123.0322 degrees west in the West Coast, and it observes Pacific Time. From that single fixed point — the internal point published for San Francisco in the U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer files — the table below gives the straight-line distance to each destination, the driving distance where we have one, an estimated drive time, and a clear label showing whether the road figure was measured via OpenStreetMap routing or produced by our documented estimate. Nothing in the table is blended or averaged between methods: measured means measured, estimate means estimate, and the two are never presented as the same kind of number.

How to Read This Table

Straight-line distance is the haversine, great-circle distance between the two Census coordinates; it is exact for the points chosen and is the best single number for comparing how far apart two cities really are. Driving distance follows roads, so it is always longer — sometimes by a tenth, sometimes by half as much again where terrain or a sparse road network intervenes. Drive time is labelled an estimate everywhere on this site, because no table can know the traffic you will meet, the weather on your day, or how often you stop. Rows marked "No road route" involve a destination with no road connection from San Francisco — an ocean or a roadless stretch intervenes — and for those rows we publish the straight-line figure only, rather than invent a drive that cannot be driven. Where a destination name in the table is a link, a full pair page sits behind it with the comparison table, direction, route summary where routing provided one, and frequently asked questions for that specific journey.

The Closest Cities to San Francisco

The nearest destinations from San Francisco in our index are Oakland (44 miles), San Jose (73 miles), Stockton (96 miles), Sacramento (103 miles), Bakersfield (276 miles). Short hops like these are the trips where driving almost always beats every alternative once door-to-door time is counted honestly, and they are also the trips where the gap between straight-line and road distance matters most in percentage terms: a river crossing, a bay, a range of hills or a one-way city-centre system can stretch a short crow-flies hop into a noticeably longer drive, which is exactly why each row carries both figures side by side instead of a single blended number. For weekend planning, the closest-cities group around San Francisco is the natural starting shortlist — each is close enough for a there-and-back day, and each linked pair page sets out the drive time with the same stop-and-traffic cautions we apply to the longest hauls.

The Longest Hauls From San Francisco

At the other end of the table, the farthest destinations from San Francisco are Boston (2727 miles), Miami (2623 miles), New York (2602 miles), Virginia Beach (2558 miles), Philadelphia (2550 miles). The average straight-line distance from San Francisco to all 65 cities listed here is 1500 miles, which gives a quick sense of how centrally or how peripherally San Francisco sits within the national city network: a low average means most of the country is within a moderate drive or a short flight, while a high average — typical of a coastal or corner-of-the-map city — means most journeys start with a long first leg just to reach the middle of the network. Trips at the far end of this table are multi-day drives for almost everyone, and the pair pages treat them that way, with explicit advice about splitting the wheel time, allowing for time-zone shifts where the destination clock differs from San Francisco's, and treating the published drive time as moving time rather than elapsed time. 10 of the routes in this table carry a measured OpenStreetMap routing figure; the remainder are estimates built with the circuity method described on our methodology page, and they are labelled as estimates in every row.

All Distances From San Francisco

Planning a Trip From San Francisco

Start any plan from San Francisco with the road figure, not the straight line, and then make three honest adjustments. First, add stops: on a drive over three hours, breaks for fuel, food and rest are not optional extras, and they routinely add ten to twenty percent to elapsed time. Second, add the ends: the table measures from the Census point of San Francisco to the Census point of the destination, and your real start and finish — a suburb, an airport, a hotel across town — can add meaningful miles at both ends, especially where San Francisco or the destination spreads over a wide area. Third, add the day itself: rush hours at either end, holiday traffic, summer roadworks and winter weather all stretch the same road miles into very different days. The companion guides on this site — why drive times vary and planning a long drive — work through those adjustments in detail, and the methodology page sets out exactly how every number in the table above was produced, from the Gazetteer coordinates to the routing and estimate methods.

A Note on San Francisco’s Coordinates

The internal point the U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer files publish for San Francisco sits well west of the downtown peninsula, because it represents the whole of the consolidated city-and-county rather than a downtown pin. Distances measured from that official point therefore run longer than distances measured from a central San Francisco address. We keep the official point, rather than substituting a hand-picked one, so that every figure stays reproducible from the named source.

Sources: Coordinates: U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer files; driving data: OpenStreetMap/OSRM — retrieved October 2026.