SRTM/HGT elevation for QGIS without USGS: download by coordinates, make a GeoTIFF

You need terrain elevation for QGIS — to build hillshade, contours, 3D or simply colour the land by height. The classic route, USGS EarthExplorer, hits two walls: it requires registration and sign-in, and classic SRTM is cut off at 60° north, so Murmansk, Norilsk or the Arctic aren't there. Let's cover the short answer and a way to skip USGS entirely.

The short, honest answer about USGS

USGS EarthExplorer and EROS give SRTM and other DEMs for free, but:

• you need a USGS account and a verified login — no download without signing up;
• the SRTM mission scanned Earth between 56°S and 60°N, so high northern latitudes have no data (or coarser data from other sources);
• the interface hands you .hgt tiles that you still have to stitch and reproject to your area.

If that works for you, the route is fine. But if you want the exact area right away and without an account — there's a shorter path.

Where to download elevation without USGS

We deliver terrain from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30 — an open global ESA dataset at 30-metre resolution. Unlike old SRTM, Copernicus covers all land, including the Arctic, Svalbard and polar regions. No registration needed: select an area, download the file.

Formats for your task:

• HGT — the height array itself: the same SRTM-like tiles where every cell holds an elevation in metres. This is what you need for terrain analysis and for an elevation GeoTIFF (how to get one is in the next section). More on the format in the HGT deep dive. Download: HGT elevation.
• Hillshade — a ready georeferenced shaded-relief underlay if you need a nice relief map rather than the raw height array: download hillshade.

One thing not to mix up: the GeoTIFF chip in our builder gives you not elevation but a rendered map with georeferencing — a picture that lands exactly on its spot in QGIS. It's a handy underlay, but it carries no height values. For elevation, go with HGT.

How to open and use it in QGIS

Load the .hgt file like any raster: Layer → Add Layer → Add Raster Layer — GDAL reads SRTM HGT directly, no conversion needed up front.

If you specifically need an elevation GeoTIFF, it's one step from that layer: right-click the layer → Export → Save As… → type GeoTIFF → pick a file. You get the same height array, now in the GeoTIFF many tools expect.

From the elevation layer you can then derive, in a couple of clicks:

• hillshade (Raster → Analysis → Hillshade) — or just download a ready one from us;
• contours (Raster → Extraction → Contour);
• height colouring (Symbology → Singleband pseudocolor).

Our hillshade is computed with the Horn algorithm (default, robust) and Zevenbergen-Thorne, with a light azimuth of 315° (north-west, cartographic tradition) and altitude 45° — the same settings that give the familiar "Swiss" relief. A detailed breakdown of the parameters is in the hillshade guide.

Attribution

The elevation data is Copernicus DEM. When you publish a map, credit it: "produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved". It's a licence requirement and the wording is fixed — do not reword it.

In short

• USGS EarthExplorer requires an account, and SRTM doesn't cover above 60°N.
• The no-registration alternative is Copernicus GLO-30 (30 m, all land): download elevation as HGT, and make the elevation GeoTIFF from it in QGIS with a single "Save As…".
• If you need a finished relief map rather than a height matrix, take the hillshade.