Comparison of our average dust distances derived from stars to VLBI distances (mainly masers) derived from trigonometric parallax observations towards low- and high-mass star forming regions. We find good agreement between the two methods, with a typical scatter of ≲10% in distance for clouds across the entire distance range explored (100 pc−2.5 kpc). The errors we report for the dust distances account for both the statistical and systematic uncertainty, added in quadrature. The shaded region bounding the 1:1 indicates the typical combined uncertainty we estimate for our dust distances.