Nominatim
Shares rank 4 of 5 mapping APIs by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Accurate on clean address examples
“I find that it gives up quickly when there's one or two typos in an address. It nails your examples.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “RAG Is Simpler Than You Think” Single importance ranking model
“it already condenses a lot of this into a single importance/ranking model”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack” Used through the OSM API
“I usually use the OSM API for that”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: A map component for shadcn/ui”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak on typos and hard addresses
“I find that it gives up quickly when there's one or two typos in an address. It nails your examples.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “RAG Is Simpler Than You Think” “Addresses are hard. OSM Nominatim struggles with them all the time.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman” Huge data and hard to operate
“it's ~57gb of data and indexes for one country only, and it barely supports fuzzy search”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “StreetComplete on iOS is now in public beta” “avoid the on-device pain you hit with OSRM/Nominatim”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack” “it’s powerful, but it’s heavy to operate”
Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack” Mediocre results next to Google Maps
“unless geocoding services like Nominatim get as good as Google Maps's search, I cannot use it”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “OsmAnd's Faster Offline Navigation” “Nominatim can sometimes produce mediocre results”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “Map To Poster – Create Art of your favourite city”
Other mapping APIs people recommend
The four most recommended other mapping APIs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mapbox | 10 | 3 | 77% | 9 | — | Approved |
| MapLibre | 9 | 2 | 82% | 4 | — | — |
| Protomaps | 8 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| NominatimThis page | 6 | 4 | 60% | 5 | — | — |
| Google Maps API | 6 | 17 | 26% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it's ~57gb of data and indexes for one country only, and it barely supports fuzzy search”
“I find that it gives up quickly when there's one or two typos in an address. It nails your examples.”
“Addresses are hard. OSM Nominatim struggles with them all the time.”
“unless geocoding services like Nominatim get as good as Google Maps's search, I cannot use it”
“Nominatim can sometimes produce mediocre results”
“it already condenses a lot of this into a single importance/ranking model”
“avoid the on-device pain you hit with OSRM/Nominatim”
“it’s powerful, but it’s heavy to operate”
“I usually use the OSM API for that”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.