How far is San Francisco from Portland by car?

Driving non-stop from Portland to San Francisco

How far is San Francisco from Portland? Here's the quick answer if you don't sleep at all, or you have a friend with you so each person can drive some of the way, letting you make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 634 miles or 1020 km

Driving time: 9 hours, 55 minutes

This is a pretty long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Portland to San Francisco

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula. For a long distance, this appears as a curve on the map, and this is often the route that commercial airlines will take so it's a good estimate of the frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate as well.

Flight distance: 535 miles or 861 km

Flight time: 1 hour, 24 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 99 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.2x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/6th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a medium length flight, so unless you have a nice private jet, you might be booking a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.

Portland to San Francisco road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to San Francisco, and you want to stop along the way to rest. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and maybe even find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over more than one day.

Road trip: 2 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 11.5 hours on the road with 1 overnight

Itinerary

Start in Portland.

Drive for about 2 hours, then stop in Eugene and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 2.5 hours then stop in Grants Pass and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 2 hours then stop in Mount Shasta (California). Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 1 hour, then stop in Redding and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 3 hours then stop in Napa and stay for 2 hours.

Finally, drive for about 58 minutes and arrive in San Francisco.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

Portland to San Francisco airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Portland International Airport (PDX)

Arrival airport: San Francisco International Airport (SFO)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 18 minutes

Getting to your destination: 33 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from PDX to SFO and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 1 hour, 46 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Portland to San Francisco including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 5 hours

To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:

Plan a trip to San Francisco

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to San Francisco, California. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in San Francisco, or find out how many days in San Francisco to visit. Trippy has an entire Q&A community where you can post questions and get answers from expert travelers or locals who know the area. For instance, you might be interested in the answers to this question: road trip ideas. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Top of the Mark. A great place to eat might be Ike's Place. Trippy members can suggest things to do in San Francisco like Golden Gate Bridge. Check out some of the questions people have asked about San Francisco like Best seafood restaurant in S.F.?. Click the button below to explore San Francisco in detail.

How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from San Francisco to Portland, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Portland, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Portland!

Is the drive from San Francisco to Portland Scenic?

How far is Portland from San Francisco by plane?

Where should I stop between San Francisco and Portland?

What is halfway between Portland and San Francisco?