How long is a car ride from Sacramento to LA?

The driving time from Los Angeles, California to Sacramento, California is:

5 hours, 47 minutes

Average driving speed: 66.4 mph
Kilometers per hour: 106.8 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

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Map of driving directions from Los Angeles, CA to Sacramento, CA

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest. You can use DriveDistance.com to find out how far is it to drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento with full directions.

More trip calculations

How long is the drive from Los Angeles, CA to Sacramento, CA? The total driving time is 5 hours, 47 minutes.

Your trip begins in Los Angeles, California. It ends in Sacramento, California.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from Los Angeles, CA to Sacramento, CA.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from Los Angeles, CA to Sacramento, CA based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

If you're meeting a friend, you might be interested in finding the city that is halfway between Los Angeles, CA and Sacramento, CA.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from Los Angeles, CA to Sacramento, CA.

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Driving time calculator

Travelmath helps you find the driving time based on actual directions for your road trip. You can find out how long it will take to drive between any two cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes. This can also help you plan the best route to travel to your destination. Compare the results with the flight time calculator to see how much longer it might take to drive the distance instead of flying. You can also print out pages with a travel map.

Driving non-stop from Sacramento to Los Angeles

How far is Los Angeles from Sacramento? Here's the quick answer if you are able to make this entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 384 miles or 618 km

Driving time: 5 hours, 47 minutes

Realistically, you'll probably want to add a buffer for rest stops, gas, or food along the way. To get a better idea of how long this trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Sacramento to Los Angeles

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Sacramento, California and Los Angeles, 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.

Flight distance: 361 miles or 581 km

Flight time: 1 hour

The straight line flight distance is 23 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.1x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/4th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book 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.

Sacramento to Los Angeles road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Los Angeles, 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: 8 hours on the road with 1 overnight

Itinerary

Start in Sacramento.

Drive for about 51 minutes, then stop in Stockton and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 1.5 hours then stop at Pea Soup Andersen's and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 1.5 hours then stop at Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 1 hour, then stop in Lost Hills and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 49 minutes then stop in Bakersfield and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 2 hours then stop at Griffith Observatory and stay for 1.5 hours.

Finally, drive for about 13 minutes and arrive in Los Angeles.

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:

Sacramento to Los Angeles 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: Sacramento International Airport (SMF)

Arrival airport: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

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: 28 minutes

Getting to your destination: 36 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from SMF to LAX 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, 22 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Sacramento to Los Angeles 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: 4 hours

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

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 Los Angeles to Sacramento, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

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

How long is the drive to Sacramento to LA?

How far is Sacramento from LA by plane?

How much does it cost to drive from Sacramento to LA?

Where should I stop between Sacramento and Los Angeles?