How far is Columbia SC to the ocean?

The driving distance from Columbia, South Carolina to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is:

152 miles / 245 km

Plan your road trip at  

How far is Columbia SC to the ocean?


Map of driving directions from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC

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 Columbia to Myrtle Beach with directions.


More trip calculations

The total driving distance from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC is 152 miles or 245 kilometers.

Your trip begins in Columbia, South Carolina. It ends in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

If you are planning a road trip, you might also want to calculate the total driving time from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC so you can see when you'll arrive at your destination.

You can also calculate the cost of driving from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC 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 Columbia, SC and Myrtle Beach, SC.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the straight line distance to fly from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC.




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.

Driving non-stop from Columbia to Myrtle Beach

How far is Myrtle Beach from Columbia? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.

Nonstop drive: 152 miles or 245 km

Driving time: 2 hours, 39 minutes

Even though you can drive this distance straight through, it might be more interesting to stop along the way. You can scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.



Flying non-stop from Columbia to Myrtle Beach

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Columbia, South Carolina and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. 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: 125 miles or 202 km

Flight time: 45 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 27 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.2x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/4th 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. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.




Columbia to Myrtle Beach road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Myrtle Beach, 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: 3.5 hours on the road


Itinerary

Start in Columbia.


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:


Columbia to Myrtle Beach airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)

Arrival airport: Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 19 minutes

Getting to your destination: 7 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an example flight from CAE to MYR and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 45 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Columbia to Myrtle Beach including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 3 hours


To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:



How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Myrtle Beach to Columbia, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Columbia, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Columbia!

What is the closest ocean beach to Columbia SC?

The two beaches around Charleston Are the closest ones to Columbia, SC. They are Isle of Palms Beach and Folly Beach.

Is Columbia South Carolina near water?

1796, oldest in Columbia. The city is located about 13 miles (21 km) northwest of the geographic center of South Carolina, and is the primary city of the Midlands region of the state. It lies at the confluence of the Saluda River and the Broad River, which merge at Columbia to form the Congaree River.

How far is Myrtle Beach from Columbia?

There are 125.13 miles from Columbia to Myrtle Beach in east direction and 148 miles (238.18 kilometers) by car, following the I-20 route. Columbia and Myrtle Beach are 2 hours 37 mins far apart, if you drive non-stop . This is the fastest route from Columbia, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC.

Is Columbia South Carolina a nice place to live?

Thinking of moving to Columbia? South Carolina's capital city is a fast-growing metro that offers a small town feel and affordable cost of living—and with a friendly culture, incredible art scene, and fantastic restaurants, it's no wonder why Cola Town is one of the top 100 best places to live in the U.S.