Use the free KML to GeoJSON Converter below: your data never leaves your browser — all work happens on your device, and nothing is uploaded to any server.
From Google Earth to the Open Web
KML is the format Google Earth made famous. It stores placemarks, paths, and shapes in XML, and it has carried countless saved places, hiking routes, and project boundaries over the years. GeoJSON is the format the modern web prefers: lighter, JSON-based, and understood by nearly every web mapping library. Moving data from KML to GeoJSON is therefore a common migration, and this converter does it entirely in your browser.
The tool reads your KML with the browser’s own XML parser, finds every Placemark, and turns it into a GeoJSON feature. Names and descriptions become properties. Points become Point geometries, lines become LineString geometries, and polygons become Polygon geometries with their rings preserved. The result is a FeatureCollection, the standard GeoJSON container, ready to load into a web map, a GIS tool, or a script.
How to Use It
Paste your KML into the box. A full KML file works, and so does a fragment containing Placemark elements. Click convert, and the GeoJSON appears below, pretty-printed so you can read it. Copy it or download it as a .geojson file. If the tool reports no placemarks, check that your file actually contains Placemark elements: some exports wrap them in folders or network links, and a file that only references another file has no placemarks of its own to convert.
Coordinates in KML are longitude, latitude, and optionally altitude, separated by commas, with points separated by spaces. The tool preserves that order and keeps altitude when present, so a point at height stays at height. GeoJSON uses the same longitude-first order, so coordinates transfer without swapping. That shared convention is convenient, but it still trips people up when they read coordinates aloud, so the tool never reorders anything: what was longitude stays longitude.
What Converts, and What Stays Behind
Placemark geometry converts faithfully: points, lines, and polygons, including polygons with inner rings for holes. Names and descriptions carry over as properties. What does not convert is styling. KML can carry colours, icons, line widths, and balloon templates, and GeoJSON has no standard place for those. A converted feature keeps its shape and its data, but not its look. If styling matters, reapply it in your target map tool, where styles are usually simpler and more consistent anyway.
Folders and document structure also flatten. KML organises placemarks into folders and documents, while a GeoJSON FeatureCollection is a flat list. The tool keeps every placemark but drops the folder hierarchy. If folder names matter to you, consider adding the folder name to each placemark’s description before converting, or converting folder by folder and handling the outputs separately. Extended data, the custom fields some KML files carry, is not parsed into properties by this tool, so check your output if your KML relies on it.
Real Uses for the Conversion
The most common use is moving a Google Earth project onto a web map. A set of saved places, a planned route, or a boundary drawn in Earth becomes GeoJSON that a web mapping library can render directly, without any server-side conversion. Another is analysis: once features are GeoJSON, scripts can filter them, measure them, and join them to other data. A third is archiving: GeoJSON is plain JSON, easy to store in version control and to diff, while KML’s XML is bulkier and harder to compare line by line.
Field teams use this conversion too. A route planned on a desktop becomes GeoJSON for a mobile mapping app, or a boundary shared as KML becomes GeoJSON for a dashboard. In each case the conversion is a bridge, not a destination: the value is that the same places now work in tools that never understood KML. Because the conversion runs locally, private places and project boundaries never leave your machine in the process.
Privacy and Practical Tips
Everything happens in your browser. Your KML is never uploaded, stored, or logged. That matters because KML files often hold personal places: homes, favourite walks, project sites, and land boundaries. Paste, convert, copy, close. Two practical tips: validate the GeoJSON output in your map tool before deleting the KML, because a quick visual check catches a swapped coordinate or a missing ring faster than reading JSON. And keep the original KML as your archive, since it may hold styling and structure that GeoJSON does not preserve.