Random Location Generator: Random GPS Coordinates on Earth

Generate one or 1,000 geographically uniform world coordinates or constrain them to a bounding box, with DMS and CSV output.

Generating a random point on Earth sounds like it should need nothing more than a random latitude and a random longitude, but a naive version of that clusters points near the poles, where lines of longitude bunch together. This tool corrects for that in whole-world mode, and separately supports a custom bounding box with its own validation, so a batch of test coordinates can be scattered globally or constrained to a specific region without producing an invalid or silently wrong span.

How to generate random locations

  1. Leave Area on Whole world (uniform sphere), or switch to Custom bounding box and enter the north, south, west and east edges in decimal degrees.
  2. Set Locations to any number from 1 to 1,000.
  3. Click Generate locations; an invalid box shows an error instead of results.
  4. Read each point as decimal degrees to seven places and as degrees, minutes and seconds with N/S/E/W; the table lists the first 100.
  5. Click Download CSV to save the whole batch as random-locations.csv with latitude and longitude columns.

Spreading points evenly across the whole globe

Longitude in whole-world mode is drawn uniformly across the full -180 to 180 range, which is correct on its own — every meridian is the same length. Latitude is not drawn uniformly, though: it's computed as the arcsine of a uniform random value scaled into [-1, 1], because a straight uniform draw over -90 to 90 would bunch points near the poles, where the circles of constant latitude are physically much shorter than near the equator. The arcsine transform is what keeps points spread evenly by actual surface area rather than by degrees.

A bounding box has to be internally consistent in both directions

Custom-bounds mode checks the north and south edges are each within -90 to 90 and that north is at or above south, and separately checks that east and west are each within -180 to 180 on their own — an out-of-range longitude on either edge is rejected before any point is generated, rather than producing a plausible-looking but silently wrong span. An invalid box throws an error you'll see immediately instead of returning coordinates that only look reasonable.

When the east edge is numerically less than the west edge, the box is treated as wrapping across the antimeridian, and the sampled longitude is wrapped back into the normal -180 to 180 range afterward — so a box like west 170, east -170 correctly spans the date line instead of being read as an impossibly narrow or backwards region.

Inside a custom box, latitude is drawn evenly in degrees rather than by surface area, unlike whole-world mode. A tall box covering tens of degrees therefore puts slightly more points per square kilometer near its poleward edge; for a city- or country-sized box the difference is too small to notice.

Reading results as decimal degrees or DMS

Every generated point is shown two ways: raw decimal degrees to seven places, and the traditional degrees-minutes-seconds format with compass direction. A batch can hold up to 1,000 points; the table on screen shows the first 100 for readability, while the CSV download always contains the full batch.

What people use random coordinates for

Not cryptographically random, and not filtered to real places

This generator draws from the browser's ordinary Math.random, not a cryptographic random source — fine for seeding a map demo, load-testing a geocoding pipeline, or filling a privacy-safe test dataset, wrong for anything where the coordinates need to be unpredictable to someone else. It's also a purely mathematical sampler: nothing filters generated points to land on inhabited land, so a batch generated over a small ocean-heavy bounding box may return points that are technically valid but sit in open water.

Questions people ask about Random Location & Coordinate Generator

What are the chances a random point lands on land?
In whole-world mode points are spread evenly by area, so the odds match the share of Earth's surface that is land, commonly put at about 29 percent — roughly 290 points in a batch of 1,000, Antarctica included. The rest fall in oceans and seas, since nothing filters them out.
Can I export to GeoJSON or KML?
Not from this page; the only download is a CSV with latitude and longitude columns, which QGIS, Google My Maps and most GIS software can import as points. For a GeoJSON file of random points around a center, use the radius generator on the Geographic Midpoint Calculator page.
Can I see the place name for a generated point?
No. The tool makes no network requests, so it never reverse-geocodes a coordinate into a country, city or address. Paste a decimal pair into a map service's search box to see what is there, or feed the CSV to a reverse-geocoding API.
In what order are latitude and longitude listed?
Latitude always comes first, then longitude, both in the on-screen table and in the CSV header. Negative latitude means south and negative longitude means west. GeoJSON and some mapping APIs expect longitude first, so swap the columns when importing into those.
Why does whole-world mode use arcsine for latitude instead of a plain random number between -90 and 90?
A plain uniform draw over -90 to 90 packs points too densely near the poles, since lines of latitude get physically shorter the closer they are to a pole. Passing a uniform value through arcsine corrects for that compression so points end up spread evenly across the sphere's actual surface area, not just evenly across the number line of possible latitude values.
Can I generate points inside a specific city or country's bounding box?
Yes, by switching to custom-bounds mode and entering the north, south, east, and west edges of the box in decimal degrees yourself — the tool doesn't look up a place name for you, so you'll need the bounding box coordinates from another source first.
How many locations can I generate in one batch?
Up to 1,000 per batch. The results table shows only the first 100 on screen for readability, but the CSV file you can download always contains every point in the full batch, not just the visible subset.
Are the generated coordinates cryptographically random?
No. They come from the browser's standard Math.random function, which is fine for generating realistic-looking test data but not designed to resist prediction the way a cryptographic random source is. Don't use this tool anywhere unpredictability against an adversary actually matters.

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Content reviewed 2026-09-27.