Alternatives to OpenStreetMap logo

Alternatives to OpenStreetMap

Google Maps, Mapbox, OpenLayers, Leaflet, and ArcGIS are the most popular alternatives and competitors to OpenStreetMap.
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What is OpenStreetMap and what are its top alternatives?

OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
OpenStreetMap is a tool in the Mapping APIs category of a tech stack.

Top Alternatives to OpenStreetMap

  • Google Maps
    Google Maps

    Create rich applications and stunning visualisations of your data, leveraging the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of Google Maps and a modern web platform that scales as you grow. ...

  • Mapbox
    Mapbox

    We make it possible to pin travel spots on Pinterest, find restaurants on Foursquare, and visualize data on GitHub. ...

  • OpenLayers
    OpenLayers

    An opensource javascript library to load, display and render maps from multiple sources on web pages. ...

  • Leaflet
    Leaflet

    Leaflet is an open source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. It is developed by Vladimir Agafonkin of MapBox with a team of dedicated contributors. Weighing just about 30 KB of gzipped JS code, it has all the features most developers ever need for online maps. ...

  • ArcGIS
    ArcGIS

    It is a geographic information system for working with maps and geographic information. It is used for creating and using maps, compiling geographic data, analyzing mapped information, sharing and much more. ...

  • Java Persistence API
    Java Persistence API

    It is a Java application programming interface specification that describes the management of relational data in applications using Java Platform, Standard Edition and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition.It provides a POJO persistence model for object-relational mapping. ...

  • Google Places API
    Google Places API

    You can provide users data on location names, addresses, ratings, reviews, contact information, and atmosphere. Local guides and users submit tens of millions of updates every day, so you can count on accurate, reliable information. ...

  • Here Maps
    Here Maps

    The Open Location Platform company, enables people, businesses and cities to harness the power of location ...

OpenStreetMap alternatives & related posts

Google Maps logo

Google Maps

37.5K
25.5K
565
Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery
37.5K
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+ 1
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PROS OF GOOGLE MAPS
  • 253
    Free
  • 136
    Address input through maps api
  • 81
    Sharable Directions
  • 47
    Google Earth
  • 45
    Unique
  • 3
    Custom maps designing
CONS OF GOOGLE MAPS
  • 4
    Google Attributions and logo
  • 1
    Only map allowed alongside google place autocomplete

related Google Maps posts

A huge component of our product relies on gathering public data about locations of interest. Google Places API gives us that ability in the most efficient way. Since we are primarily going to be using as google data as a source of information for our MVP, we might as well start integrating the Google Places API in our system. We have worked with Google Maps in the past and we might take some inspiration from our previous projects onto this one.

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Adam Abdelmoula
CPO at Split Mobile Software · | 5 upvotes · 82.9K views

We need some advice about the map services provider. We are a mobility app that just launched 5 months ago in Tunisia offering P2P carpooling. We are currently using Google Maps API for maps (Places API, Geocoding API, Directions API & Distance Matrix API). Thus, we received expensive bills from Google Cloud following the number of requests we are using. We are looking forward to reduce the number of requests in general because we can't afford these large bills at this stage, knowing that they are going to increase proportionally to the active users of the app. We tried to optimize multiple times but it isn't enough. We are searching for optimization advice or ideas on how we use the APIs, or other map providers (like OpenStreetMap or similar) that offers free or cheaper options than Google Maps, without lacking quality of information (we are in Tunisia and we have to choose options that have enough data about Tunisia). Thanks!

See more
Mapbox logo

Mapbox

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877
113
Design and publish beautiful maps
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PROS OF MAPBOX
  • 28
    Best mapping service outside of Google Maps
  • 22
    OpenStreetMap
  • 15
    Beautifully vectorable
  • 11
    Fluid user experience
  • 8
    Extensible
  • 7
    React/ RNative integration
  • 5
    3D Layers
  • 4
    Affordable
  • 4
    Low Level API
  • 3
    Great customer support
  • 3
    Custom themes
  • 2
    High data volume rendering
  • 1
    Alt
CONS OF MAPBOX
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    related Mapbox posts

    Stephen Gheysens
    Lead Solutions Engineer at Inscribe · | 6 upvotes · 34.5K views

    Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").

    MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).

    I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:

    • Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.

    • Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.

    • At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.

    *You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.

    See more

    Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?

    Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?

    See more
    OpenLayers logo

    OpenLayers

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    425
    50
    A high-performance, feature-packed library for all your mapping needs
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    PROS OF OPENLAYERS
    • 13
      Flexibility
    • 10
      Maturity
    • 7
      Incredibly comprehensive, excellent support
    • 7
      Open Source
    • 4
      Choice of map providers
    • 3
      Low Level API
    • 3
      Extensible
    • 3
      Strong community
    CONS OF OPENLAYERS
      Be the first to leave a con

      related OpenLayers posts

      Leaflet logo

      Leaflet

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      1K
      107
      JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps
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      1K
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      PROS OF LEAFLET
      • 32
        Light weight
      • 28
        Free
      • 12
        Evolutive via plugins
      • 10
        OpenStreetMap
      • 9
        Strong community
      • 7
        Choice of map providers
      • 6
        Easy API
      • 3
        Alternative to Google Maps
      CONS OF LEAFLET
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        related Leaflet posts

        Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?

        Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?

        See more
        ArcGIS logo

        ArcGIS

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        174
        20
        A geographic information system for working with maps
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        PROS OF ARCGIS
        • 7
          Reponsive
        • 4
          A lot of widgets
        • 4
          Data driven vizualisation
        • 2
          3D
        • 2
          Easy tà learn
        • 1
          Easy API
        CONS OF ARCGIS
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          related ArcGIS posts

          Stephen Gheysens
          Lead Solutions Engineer at Inscribe · | 6 upvotes · 34.5K views

          Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").

          MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).

          I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:

          • Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.

          • Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.

          • At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.

          *You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.

          See more
          Java Persistence API logo

          Java Persistence API

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          A Java application programming interface specification
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          + 1
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          PROS OF JAVA PERSISTENCE API
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            CONS OF JAVA PERSISTENCE API
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              Google Places API logo

              Google Places API

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              94
              0
              Help users discover the world with rich details for points of interest
              71
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              + 1
              0
              PROS OF GOOGLE PLACES API
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                CONS OF GOOGLE PLACES API
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                  related Google Places API posts

                  A huge component of our product relies on gathering public data about locations of interest. Google Places API gives us that ability in the most efficient way. Since we are primarily going to be using as google data as a source of information for our MVP, we might as well start integrating the Google Places API in our system. We have worked with Google Maps in the past and we might take some inspiration from our previous projects onto this one.

                  See more
                  Here Maps logo

                  Here Maps

                  48
                  82
                  0
                  An app that makes city navigation effortless whether you need a taxi, public transportation or drive on your...
                  48
                  82
                  + 1
                  0
                  PROS OF HERE MAPS
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                    CONS OF HERE MAPS
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                      related Here Maps posts