# Nominatim

6 Hacker News commenters recommended Nominatim and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free open-source geocoder built on OpenStreetMap data, recommended for address and place lookup you can run yourself. Critics say it struggles with typos and is heavy to operate.

## Why people recommend it

- Accurate on clean address examples (1 comments): "I find that it gives up quickly when there's one or two typos in an address. It nails your examples." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448223))
- Single importance ranking model (1 comments): "it already condenses a lot of this into a single importance/ranking model" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486458))
- Used through the OSM API (1 comments): "I usually use the OSM API for that" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983379))

## What people warn about

- Weak on typos and hard addresses (2 comments): "I find that it gives up quickly when there's one or two typos in an address. It nails your examples." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448223)) "Addresses are hard. OSM Nominatim struggles with them all the time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47843497))
- Huge data and hard to operate (3 comments): "it's ~57gb of data and indexes for one country only, and it barely supports fuzzy search" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922118)) "avoid the on-device pain you hit with OSRM/Nominatim" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46482864)) "it’s powerful, but it’s heavy to operate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46412777))
- Mediocre results next to Google Maps (2 comments): "unless geocoding services like Nominatim get as good as Google Maps's search, I cannot use it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173553)) "Nominatim can sometimes produce mediocre results" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46657811))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mapbox](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mapbox.md): 10 recommend
- [MapLibre](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maplibre.md): 9 recommend
- [Protomaps](https://hackerapproved.com/p/protomaps.md): 8 recommend
- [Google Maps API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-maps-api.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Nominatim", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nominatim/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).