16-point compass to bearing
North-Northeast is 22.5°, East-Northeast 67.5° and North-Northwest 337.5°: type any of the 16 standard directions, in full or abbreviated, and get its exact central bearing. Unknown phrases are rejected, never rounded to a neighbour. Free in your browser.
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Worked example
- Direction
- north-northeast
- Input
- north-northeast
- Direction
- North-Northeast
- Abbreviation
- NNE
- Bearing degrees
- 22.5
This 16-point compass to bearing converter changes a standard direction such as north-northeast, southeast, or WNW into its central numeric bearing. The sixteen-point rose divides a full circle into equal sectors separated by 22.5 degrees, beginning with North at 0 degrees and continuing clockwise. Enter a full English direction name or its familiar abbreviation, and the result identifies the canonical name, abbreviation, point index, and exact bearing. The calculation is deterministic, runs without network access, and does not estimate magnetic declination or choose a nearby direction from arbitrary degrees.
How the 16-point compass rose maps names to bearings
A sixteen-point compass rose divides 360 degrees into sixteen equal directional sectors. Each sector therefore spans 22.5 degrees, and every named point has a central bearing at an exact multiple of that interval. North starts at 0 degrees.
Moving clockwise, north-northeast is 22.5 degrees, northeast is 45 degrees, east-northeast is 67.5 degrees, and east is 90 degrees. The same pattern continues through south at 180 degrees, west at 270 degrees, and north-northwest at 337.5 degrees before returning to north. This capability looks up the named point and reports that central bearing; it does not return the boundaries of the surrounding sector.
The response also includes the canonical English name, standard abbreviation, zero-based point index, and total number of points. Those fields make the result easy to inspect or reuse in software. Because the mapping is a fixed mathematical convention, repeated requests with the same direction always return the same result.
No location, time, map projection, weather report, or external navigation service affects the calculation. That narrow scope makes the converter suitable for clean numeric normalization whenever source material uses sixteen-point compass terminology instead of degrees.
Entering full direction names and abbreviations correctly
Provide the direction field as a standard point on the sixteen-point compass rose. Full English names such as North, North-Northeast, East-Southeast, South-Southwest, and Northwest are accepted, as are abbreviations such as N, NNE, ESE, SSW, and NW. Matching is case-insensitive, and spaces, hyphens, or underscores between words do not change the meaning, so north northeast and NORTH-NORTHEAST resolve to the same point.
The converter remains deliberately strict about the underlying set: it accepts exactly the sixteen standard points and does not silently round an unknown phrase to the nearest direction. A thirty-two-point expression such as North by East is therefore rejected because it lies between North and North-Northeast and is not a member of this rose. Strict validation is valuable in navigation data pipelines because a plausible but guessed bearing can be harder to discover than an explicit failure.
If a source contains 32-point traditional marine directions, use a converter designed for that finer rose instead of discarding precision.
Using the central bearing in maps, navigation, and data work
The returned bearing is measured clockwise from North, following the convention commonly used for compass bearings. Remember that the result represents the center of the named sector rather than a measured course with unlimited precision. For example, WSW always maps to 247.5 degrees in this sixteen-point system, but a real observation described as west-southwest might cover a range around that center.
The capability also does not distinguish true north, magnetic north, or grid north. It performs no declination correction, so the reference north used by your source remains part of your own data interpretation. When building an automated workflow, retain the canonical direction and abbreviation returned alongside the number; they provide a useful audit trail and make it clear which rose produced the value.
Validation failures identify unsupported input rather than producing a misleading fallback bearing.
What you can do with it
Normalize navigation notes
Convert sixteen-point direction labels from route notes or field records into consistent degree values for mapping and analysis.
Prepare wind direction data
Turn standard labels such as NNE and WSW into central bearings that can be sorted, plotted, or compared numerically.
Test compass interfaces
Create stable expected bearings for compass displays, educational exercises, simulations, and automated software tests.
FAQ
How many degrees separate adjacent points?
Adjacent points are 22.5 degrees apart because the full 360-degree circle is divided evenly into sixteen parts.
What bearing does north-northeast represent?
North-northeast, abbreviated NNE, has a central bearing of 22.5 degrees clockwise from North.
Are abbreviations accepted?
Yes. Standard abbreviations from N through NNW are accepted without regard to letter case.
Does the converter support 32-point directions?
No. Expressions such as North by East are rejected because this capability intentionally implements only the sixteen-point rose.
Does the bearing include magnetic declination?
No. The result is the fixed central angle for the named compass point and does not apply location-specific magnetic correction.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/geo/cardinal16-to-bearing \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"direction":"north-northeast"}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/geo/cardinal16-to-bearing", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"direction": "north-northeast"
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/geo/cardinal16-to-bearing",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"direction": "north-northeast"
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/geo/cardinal16-to-bearing", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"direction":"north-northeast"}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"direction":"north-northeast"}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/geo/cardinal16-to-bearing", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"direction": "north-northeast"
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "geo.cardinal16_to_bearing",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
Entering full direction names and abbreviations correctly
The aliases name and compass are also accepted when an existing data source uses one of those field names. Empty values, numbers, arrays, and arbitrary labels also fail with an invalid_input error.
Using the central bearing in maps, navigation, and data work
Browser calculations and API calculations use the same pure function. Interactive use is available on the page, while an API conversion costs $0.002.
Technical questions
What does an API conversion cost?
Each successful API conversion costs $0.002. The browser version uses the same deterministic mapping.