Bearing to compass direction

How degrees map onto the 16-point compass rose

Zero degrees means north; ninety means east; one hundred eighty means south; two hundred seventy means west. Values outside zero to three hundred sixty are reduced modulo three hundred sixty, and negative headings wrap the same way, so a sensor that reports minus forty five still lands on northwest. Each sector is twenty two point five degrees wide; the implementation chooses the nearest center with standard half-up rounding and wraps three hundred sixty back to north. Send a required field named bearing as a JSON number or a numeric string. Aliases degrees, deg, azimuth, heading, and angle are accepted when your upstream schema uses those names. The sixteen rose points sit on centers every twenty two point five degrees: N at zero, NNE at twenty two point five, NE at forty five, and so on around to NNW at three hundred thirty seven point five. On success you receive direction as the short label, full_name as the English phrase, bearing_in as the finite value accepted, bearing_deg as the normalized angle on zero inclusive to three hundred sixty exclusive, index from zero through fifteen, points equal to sixteen, sector_center_deg, sector_from_deg, sector_to_deg, and method set to sixteen_point_compass_rose. Identical finite inputs always produce identical JSON because the path is pure arithmetic with no network, no random seed, and no wall clock.

Validation, errors, and reading the response fields

The only hard rejection is a bearing that is not a finite number. Finite floating-point values including large magnitudes and scientific-notation strings that parse to a finite Number are accepted and then normalized. Use direction when a map pin, status line, or CSV column needs a compact label such as NNE. Missing input, empty strings, booleans, objects, non-numeric text, NaN, and positive or negative Infinity all fail with invalid_input and are not charged after the engine rejects the request. Use full_name when a report or screen reader needs North-Northeast spelled out. Use bearing_deg when you must show the wrapped angle next to the label, and bearing_in when audit logs should preserve the raw reading before modulo. Sector bounds describe the angular window associated with the chosen center under the half-width of eleven point two five degrees, with north wrapping across the zero meridian so sector_from_deg is three hundred forty eight point seven five and sector_to_deg is eleven point two five. This product does not compute a heading from two coordinates; for that search intent use a bearing-between-points calculator. It also does not solve great-circle geodesy or cross-track distance on a sphere.

API usage, pricing, workflows, and practical limits

Call the free in-browser bearing to compass direction tool for classroom demos, field notes, and quick mental checks without installing GIS software. Authors shipping SDKs can map direction straight into UI badges and use index for sprite frames of a compass rose graphic. Prefer documenting the zero-equals-north clockwise convention in your client so users who think in math-style angles measured from east counter-clockwise convert once before calling. Use the prepaid API when a mobile navigation backend, drone telemetry normalizer, sailing log importer, or logistics dashboard needs a stable contract under KIT balance at $0.002 per successful item. Pair the endpoint with a coordinate bearing calculator when you first obtain a heading from two points, then label it for humans; keep the two steps separate so each landing matches a distinct search intent. There is no per-request size limit beyond ordinary JSON, and the work is a handful of floating-point operations inside a Worker isolate, so latency stays analytic and predictable.