Lines · Draw or tap out a line
Elevation profile and gradient along any line
Draw a line anywhere in New Zealand and get its elevation profile: distance, total climb and descent, and the gradient section by section. It works as a driveway gradient calculator, a track grade check and a fall check for a drain or a pipe run.
Driveways over about 16 % are hard for cars, and 20 % is a common council limit. The profile shows exactly which stretch breaks it.
Free to run · pay to download
Free to run, and free to save as a PNG image of the map. This tool has no file export of its own. For the terrain as a file, Download Data exports contours, a GeoTIFF or a 3D mesh with a pass: NZ$49 for 7 days or NZ$299 for 12 months.
Who uses this
- Owners and designers. Check a driveway or a path meets the grade before it is drawn up.
- Farmers. Test a track, race or fence line.
- Walkers, runners and riders. Get the climb on a route.
When to use it
- Planning a driveway, a track, a pipe run, a fence line or a race.
- Checking the climb on a walk, a ride or a run.
- Seeing whether water will flow the right way along a proposed drain.
Which tool for your job
Elevation Profile is one step in a bigger question. These are the jobs it helps with, and the tools that go with it.
If you’re working on earthworks, driveways and tracks
How much digging, and can a driveway or farm track make the grade?
- 1.Cut & Fill — Cut and fill volumes to level a pad, at a height you set or the one that balances.
- 2.Elevation Profile (this tool) — Gradient along a proposed driveway, section by section.
- 3.Route Explorer — Finds a line between two points that stays under a maximum grade.
- 4.Contour Lines — Site contours at 0.5 m or finer to hand to a designer.
If you’re working on walks, runs and rides
How much climbing, and how far?
- 1.Elevation Profile (this tool) — Distance, total climb and descent, and the steep sections.
- 2.Elevate a File — Replaces the noisy altitude in a GPX from a watch or phone with LiDAR ground height.
- 3.Measure — A quick flat distance between points.
How to use it
- Open Elevation Profile and tap out the line, corner by corner. Undo removes the last point.
- Finish the line. The profile chart appears in the panel.
- Hover the chart to read distance and elevation at any point.
Step by step: Mt Iron, Wānaka
We draw a cross-section from the houses at the foot of Mt Iron up over the top.
What it showed
- Hover the chart to read distance and height at any point, and download it as CSV.
Screenshots from NZ Elevation Tools. Aerial imagery from LINZ Basemaps. Sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed by Environment Southland, Otago Regional Council and Queenstown-Lakes District Council for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
How it works
The line is sampled at close, even spacing and the LiDAR bare-earth model is read at each sample, interpolating between cells. Ascent and descent are the sums of the rises and falls between samples; gradient is rise over run between them.
Reading the results
Gradient is in percent: 10 % is 1 m of rise for every 10 m along. Driveways over about 16 % are hard for cars; 20 % is the usual council limit.
Total ascent and descent count every small rise, so a rolling line shows more climb than the difference between its ends.
Limits and warnings
- Lines up to 25 km.
- Where 1 m LiDAR has not been flown the tool falls back to the national 8 m elevation model, and the result says what share came from the fallback. The 8 m model was interpolated from 20 m map contours and is not fit for site-scale decisions.
- Bare ground only. A bridge or a culvert shows as the valley beneath it.
Data and attribution
Results come from the LINZ national 1 m LiDAR bare-earth elevation model, read in your browser, with the national 8 m model filling any gaps. Tools that use the surface model (Sunlight, Viewshed, Object Heights) read the matching LiDAR surface tiles.
Elevation and cadastral data is sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Copyright in each LiDAR survey belongs to the body that commissioned it — a regional or district council, Waka Kotahi, NIWA and around thirty others — rather than to LINZ, which hosts and processes the national dataset. Every file exported from this site names the licensors whose surveys cover the area, and anything you publish from those files carries the same attribution requirement. See https://www.linz.govt.nz/products-services/data/licensing-and-using-data/attributing-elevation-or-aerial-imagery-data
Questions
What is the maximum driveway gradient in NZ?
It depends on the council. About 20 % (1 in 5) is a common maximum, with gentler grades near the road. Check your district plan or the council's engineering standards.
Ready to try it?
Open Elevation Profile on the map →Free to use, no account. Runs in your browser on LINZ open data. Downloading the results needs a pass: see prices.