How far apart are Santa Monica and Los Angeles?

The distance from Santa Monica, California to Los Angeles, California is:

16 miles / 26 km driving14 miles / 23 km flying

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For a quick answer, use MileageCalc.com to get the Santa Monica to Los Angeles distance.

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Distance from Santa Monica, CA to Los Angeles, CA

The total driving distance from Santa Monica, CA to Los Angeles, CA is 16 miles or 26 kilometers.

The total straight line flight distance from Santa Monica, CA to Los Angeles, CA is 14 miles.

This is equivalent to 23 kilometers or 13 nautical miles.

Your trip begins in Santa Monica, California. It ends in Los Angeles, California.

Your flight direction from Santa Monica, CA to Los Angeles, CA is East (81 degrees from North).

The distance calculator helps you figure out how far it is to get from Santa Monica, CA to Los Angeles, CA. It does this by computing the straight line flying distance ("as the crow flies") and the driving distance if the route is drivable. It uses all this data to compute the total travel mileage.

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Distance calculator

Travelmath helps you find distances based on actual road trip directions, or the straight line flight distance. You can get the distance between cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes to figure out the best route to travel to your destination. Compare the results to the straight line distance to determine whether it's better to drive or fly. The database uses the latitude and longitude of each location to calculate distance using the great circle distance formula. The calculation is done using the Vincenty algorithm and the WGS84 ellipsoid model of the Earth, which is the same one used by most GPS receivers. This gives you the flying distance "as the crow flies." Find your flight distances quickly to estimate the number of frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate. Or ask how far is it between cities to solve your homework problems. You can lookup U.S. cities, or expand your search to get the world distance for international trips. You can also print out pages with a travel map.

The driving distance from Los Angeles, California to Santa Monica, California is:

16 miles / 26 km

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Map of driving directions from Los Angeles, CA to Santa Monica, CA

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest. You can use DriveDistance.com to get the full driving distance from Los Angeles to Santa Monica with directions.

More trip calculations

The total driving distance from Los Angeles, CA to Santa Monica, CA is 16 miles or 26 kilometers.

Your trip begins in Los Angeles, California. It ends in Santa Monica, California.

If you are planning a road trip, you might also want to calculate the total driving time from Los Angeles, CA to Santa Monica, CA so you can see when you'll arrive at your destination.

You can also calculate the cost of driving from Los Angeles, CA to Santa Monica, CA based on current local fuel prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

If you're meeting a friend, you might be interested in finding the city that is halfway between Los Angeles, CA and Santa Monica, CA.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the straight line distance to fly from Los Angeles, CA to Santa Monica, CA.

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Driving distance calculator

Travelmath helps you find driving distances based on actual directions for your road trip. You can get the distance between cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes to figure out the best route to travel to your destination. Combine this information with the fuel cost tool to find out how much it will cost you to drive the distance, or compare the results to the straight line distance to determine whether it's better to drive or fly. You can print out pages with a travel map.

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Los Angeles, California and Santa Monica, California. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.

Flight distance: 14 miles or 23 km

Flight time: 5 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 2 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.1x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/3th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination.

Los Angeles to Santa Monica road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Santa Monica, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Road trip: 1 day of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 50 minutes on the road

Itinerary

Start in Los Angeles.

Drive for about 15 minutes, then stop at LACMA and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 8 minutes then stop in Culver City and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 15 minutes then stop in Venice Beach and stay for 1.5 hours.

Finally, drive for about 11 minutes and arrive in Santa Monica.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

Plan a trip to Santa Monica

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Santa Monica, California. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Santa Monica. Trippy has an entire Q&A community where you can post questions and get answers from expert travelers or locals who know the area. For instance, you might be interested in the answers to this question: Is the Santa Monica Pier worth seeing?. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Shutters On the Beach. A great place to eat might be Gjelina. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Santa Monica like Santa Monica Pier. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Santa Monica like Drinks in SM?. Click the button below to explore Santa Monica in detail.