Convert coordinates to geohash (and back) without surprises

A geohash is a cell, not a point — decoding gives an area, never the exact original coordinate. Precision, cell sizes and what decode actually returns, in one place.

Tools used in this guide

The job

Geohash encodes latitude and longitude into one short string by interleaving bits — databases and geo indexes use it because nearby places share prefixes. Tokyo Station at 35.681236, 139.767125 encodes to xn76urx66 at precision 9.

Encode and decode

Pick encode, enter the coordinate and a precision from 1 to 12. Or paste a hash and decode: you get the cell's center, its exact bounding box, and the approximate size for that precision.

Precision trades string length for cell size: 5 chars ≈ 4.9 km cells, 8 ≈ 19 m × 38 m (lat × lon), 12 is millimetre scale.
Decoding is not 'un-rounding' — u4pruydqqvj resolves to a cell around 57.64911, 10.40744; any point inside that cell produces the same hash.
The alphabet is 0–9 and b–z minus a, i, l, o — a hash containing those characters isn't a geohash.

What to watch

Cell sizes shown are equator references — longitude cells shrink toward the poles, so the same precision covers less ground in Hokkaido than in Singapore. Adjacent cells share most of their prefix but not always: two points a metre apart can sit in different cells. Limits: latitude ±90, longitude ±180, precision 1–12.