What is the Overpass API?

OpenStreetMap is a free map of the world drawn by volunteers. Besides roads and buildings it holds millions of shops, cafés, benches, defibrillators and drinking fountains, each described by tags such as amenity=cafe or shop=bakery. The Overpass API is a read-only search service for this data: you ask for everything with a certain tag in an area, and it sends back the matching places with their names, addresses and opening hours.

Several groups run free public Overpass servers. They are shared by everyone, so at busy times one of them may be slow or turn requests away while another answers right away.

Tool description

Move and zoom the map to the area you want to search, then pick what to find: a category such as Pharmacies or Public toilets, a custom OSM tag, or Anything with the name together with a name. You can also narrow any category down by name, for example Supermarkets whose name contains Lidl. Press Search map area to look in the area the map shows. The button under the zoom buttons on the map jumps to your location.

The places show up as dots on the map and in a table under the search settings, with each place's name, tag and address. Click a dot or a table row to see the place's opening hours and website too, with a link to open it on OpenStreetMap. The table sorts by any column and saves the results as CSV or JSON.

By default the tool picks the server itself: inside Europe it asks a server that holds only European data and is often less busy, and everywhere it moves on to the next server when one is busy, also asking the next one when a server is slow to answer. You can also pick a server yourself. The status line says which server answered and how fresh its copy of the map data is.

Your search runs from your browser straight to the Overpass server: the server receives the area and what you searched for, and nothing goes through our server.

Features

  • Search the area shown on an OpenStreetMap map, with your location one click away
  • Everyday categories, any OSM tag, and search by name
  • Free public Overpass servers with no API key, with automatic fallback when one is busy
  • Results on the map and in a sortable table beside it, with names, tags and addresses
  • Popups with opening hours, website and a link to the place on OpenStreetMap
  • Export of the results as CSV or JSON

Tips

  • Search a town or a neighborhood rather than a whole region: smaller areas answer faster and stay within what the public servers allow.
  • For a custom tag, look up the key and value in the Map features list on the OpenStreetMap wiki. A key alone, like wheelchair or opening_hours, finds everything that has the key with any value.
  • Names are matched in any case and anywhere in the name, so bank also finds "Swedbank" and "Bank of Ireland".
  • If the automatic choice keeps failing, all servers may be busy at once. Wait a minute and try again, or pick a server yourself.
  • Places that aren't in OpenStreetMap can't be found here. You can add a missing shop or bench yourself on openstreetmap.org.