How long is the Camino de Santiago? All ten routes, measured

By August Frederik Kramer, who has walked the Camino twice · Last updated 2 September 2026

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Ask how long the Camino is and you will get several different answers, often on the same page of results. Here are ours for all ten routes, in kilometres and miles, measured from the tracks rather than copied from a guidebook. The short answer for the route most people mean, the Camino Francés, is 768.4 km.

All ten routes, longest first

The days column is the number of stages in our own split, so walking days, with no travel at either end. Longest day is the hardest single stage in that split, which matters more than the total once you start planning.

So the range runs from the Camino Lebaniego at 66.4 km to the Vía de la Plata at 994.6 km, which is more than twelve times as far. Anyone answering "how long is the Camino" with a single number has already chosen a route for you.

The Francés from where people actually start

Most people do not walk the whole thing, and the commonest question is not how long the route is but how far is left from the town they are starting in. Measured from our stage table, along the route itself.

Sarria is on that list because it is the shortest start that still earns a Compostela, at 114.7 km. If that is the plan, the Camino Inglés is worth a look too: it is 110.1 km over 6 days and it also qualifies, with far fewer people on it.

Why the figures you see disagree

Look up any route and you will find several lengths, sometimes tens of kilometres apart. None of them is necessarily wrong. They are answers to slightly different questions, and three things account for nearly all of the spread.

Where the route starts. The Camino Francés is 768.4 km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and 742.5 km from Roncesvalles, one day further on. Both are commonly published as "the Camino Francés". That single choice accounts for a difference of about 25.9 km before anything else is measured.

Which variant is counted. Most routes have alternatives: a coastal option, a mountain option, a detour to a monastery. Two sources can measure carefully and honestly and still differ because they followed different waymarks through the same valley.

How the line was measured. A track sampled densely follows every bend and comes out longer than the same route sampled loosely, and a figure taken from a map with a ruler comes out shorter than both. This is why a number without a method is not much use, and why ours is stated below.

How we measured it

Each route is split into stages from its GPS track, and the distance here is the sum of those stages. All ten are treated identically, which is the part that matters: the absolute figure remains an estimate, but the comparison between routes holds, and that comparison is exactly what disappears when you line up numbers from ten different sources. The miles column is converted from the kilometres, not measured separately.

The climb on each route, and why elevation figures contradict each other even more than distances do, is in Camino elevation gain. If you are still choosing, which Camino route to walk compares all ten on days, steepness and hardest day. Every figure on this page comes from a dataset you can download: the Camino elevation dataset, free to reuse under the ODbL.

Common questions

How long is the Camino de Santiago?

It depends which route. The Camino Francés, which is what most people mean, is 768.4 km, or about 477 miles, over 36 walking days. Across all ten routes the range runs from 66.4 km to 994.6 km.

How many miles is the Camino de Santiago?

About 477 miles for the Camino Francés. The shortest of the ten is the Camino Lebaniego at 41 miles, and the longest is the Vía de la Plata at 618 miles.

How far is Sarria to Santiago?

114.7 km, or about 71 miles, over 5 of our stages. It is the shortest start on the Camino Francés that still earns a Compostela, which is why it is the busiest place on the route.

What is the shortest Camino route?

The Camino Lebaniego, 66.4 km over 3 days. Of the routes that end in Santiago itself, the shortest is the Camino Inglés at 110.1 km over 6 days, and it is long enough to qualify for a Compostela.

What is the longest Camino route?

The Vía de la Plata, 994.6 km over 47 walking days, which is about 618 miles.

Why do different sources give different lengths?

Three reasons, and none of them is anyone being careless: the route can start in more than one town, most routes have variants that are all legitimately waymarked, and a track sampled densely measures longer than the same route sampled loosely. A distance without a stated method cannot be compared with another one.

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