Calculator
Steps to distance
Type in a step count and your height. The calculator estimates your step length, turns the steps into kilometres and miles, and tells you roughly how long that walk takes.
Your numbers
However many you have done, or have left to do.
Used to estimate your step length. Nothing is sent anywhere.
10,000 steps comes to
7.12 km • 4.42 mi
Steps to kilometres and miles
Worked out at your height of 172 cm, which gives a step length of 71 cm. Change the height above and the table changes with it.
| Steps | Distance | In miles | Walking time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 712 m | 0.44 mi | 9 min |
| 2,000 | 1.42 km | 0.88 mi | 17 min |
| 3,000 | 2.14 km | 1.33 mi | 26 min |
| 4,000 | 2.85 km | 1.77 mi | 34 min |
| 5,000 | 3.56 km | 2.21 mi | 43 min |
| 6,000 | 4.27 km | 2.65 mi | 51 min |
| 7,000 | 4.99 km | 3.10 mi | 1 h |
| 8,000 | 5.70 km | 3.54 mi | 1 h 8 min |
| 9,000 | 6.41 km | 3.98 mi | 1 h 17 min |
| 10,000 | 7.12 km | 4.42 mi | 1 h 25 min |
| 12,500 | 8.90 km | 5.53 mi | 1 h 47 min |
| 15,000 | 10.7 km | 6.64 mi | 2 h 8 min |
| 17,500 | 12.5 km | 7.74 mi | 2 h 30 min |
| 20,000 | 14.2 km | 8.85 mi | 2 h 51 min |
Turning steps into a distance, honestly
A pedometer counts steps. A map measures metres. The only thing that connects the two is your step length — how far you travel with one step — and that is a personal number. Multiply the steps by your step length and you have a distance; get the step length wrong by 10% and every distance you calculate is wrong by 10% too.
Why step length varies so much
Adults typically walk with a step somewhere between 60 cm and 85 cm. Height is the biggest single factor, because longer legs swing further, but it is not the only one. The same person will take shorter steps walking uphill, on a rough path, in the snow, in unfamiliar shoes, when carrying shopping, when tired at the end of the day, or when weaving through a busy high street. Walking faster generally means longer steps rather than just quicker ones, which is why the same 10,000 steps can cover noticeably different distances on a brisk morning and a slow evening.
Two words get mixed up here and it is worth being clear. A step is one foot moving in front of the other. A stride is two steps: the distance from one heel strike to the next on the same foot. Fitness trackers count steps, so everything on this page is in steps. If you see a figure of around 1.5 m quoted for an adult, that is a stride, and using it here would halve your step count.
The height formula is an estimate
Stroll>On estimates your step length as your height multiplied by 0.414. For a 172 cm adult that gives about 71 cm. That factor comes from population averages for ordinary walking, and it is deliberately neutral: it is not a measurement of you, it is a sensible starting point that needs no effort from you at all. The app always labels the number as an estimate for exactly that reason, and every distance built on it inherits the same uncertainty — roughly ten per cent either way for most people, more if you are unusually long or short in the leg for your height.
How to measure your own step length
Ten minutes of counting will beat any formula. Here is the whole method:
- Find a known distance. Use a running track (100 m is one straight), a marked path, or measure 100 m on a map between two fixed things such as two lamp posts.
- Walk it normally. Walk the 100 m at your ordinary pace, not a careful measuring pace, and count every step — both feet.
- Divide. Divide 100 by the number of steps. 132 steps over 100 m is a step length of 0.76 m, or 76 cm.
- Do it twice. Repeat once in the other direction and average the two. Counting slips are the biggest source of error, not your legs.
- Put the number in Stroll>On. Enter it as your step length in the app. From then on the distances and step predictions are built on a measurement of you rather than an estimate from your height.
Walk the distance the way you normally walk. If you concentrate on measuring, you will march, your steps will lengthen, and you will end up with a number that flatters you and makes every future route slightly too short. Counting over 100 m is a good compromise between accuracy and boredom; over 20 m a single miscount matters far too much.
How Stroll>On uses this to plan a route
This calculator is the first half of the app. Stroll>On starts from the steps you have left today — your goal minus what you have already done — and multiplies them by your step length to get a target distance in metres. That target is what the route planner actually aims at.
It then asks a routing engine for several different walking loops from your current location, at roughly the right size. Real pavements and paths never come out at exactly the distance you asked for, so each candidate is scored on how close it lands to the target, how much of it doubles back on itself, what kind of paths it uses and how much climbing it involves. The best few that are genuinely different from each other are the ones you are offered.
Because the target came from your step length, the route can be turned straight back into a step prediction — and that is the number shown on the route card, together with the difference from your target, such as +11 steps. Showing the difference is a deliberate choice. A walk that predicts 4,011 steps against a 4,000 step target is a good result, and you deserve to see the eleven rather than have it quietly rounded away. When you finish, your tracker will disagree slightly. That is normal: it counted your actual steps, we predicted them from a distance and an average stride.
One last thing worth saying plainly: none of this is medical advice, and step goals are not a health prescription. It is a way of making the walk you were going to do anyway land where you wanted it to.
Now get a route that matches
Stroll>On does this sum for you and then finds a real walking route from where you are that fits the answer.