# OpenStreetMap

165 Hacker News commenters recommended OpenStreetMap and 36 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (5 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A free, community-edited world map that is easy to improve and powers many apps and devices, though business and POI data lags well behind Google Maps.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to contribute and fix (9 comments): "The great thing about OSM is that if an area someone cares about is sparsely covered, that's a self-solving problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802601)) "contributing to OSM is much easier when you can just take a bunch of photos and see them displayed on a map" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753225)) "Hmmm, I love OSM, consume their data in my small cycling project and regularly contribute smaller fixes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491945))
- Free, open data for everyone (5 comments): "OSM is a public service! This kind of thing should be public, individual citizens should have the agency to improve it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238574)) "Your regular reminder that OpenStreetMap has something like two or three FTEs and anchors $1bn of value." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290736)) "OSM is a great Project. Like Wikipedia it creates free data from all countries, free for everyone!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50050669))
- Powers apps, devices and projects (6 comments): "That's why I built all my geo infrastructure from scratch from osm, there's still some issues but for AI location grounding it outperforms google places" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144223)) "Love OpenStreetMap. It's kept my 15-20 year old Garmin devices alive for far longer than its parent company expected them to live." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482175)) "I can pull the most up to date maps from OSM, edit them as much as I want, and they look great on the car." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49558136))
- Great for hiking and cycling trails (3 comments): "For sports OpenStreetMap is much better anyway, in most countries it has many more hiking/cycling/MTB trails." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994108)) "Hmmm, I love OSM, consume their data in my small cycling project and regularly contribute smaller fixes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491945)) "OSM is good for hikes but lacks heavily when you want to find businesses, restaurants etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223928))

## What people warn about

- Weak business and POI data (5 comments): "OSM is great as a map, but the biggest thing keeping me from switching from Google Maps to any OSM solution is the "white pages"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48818034)) "This is more about OSM than Organic Maps, and I agree that looking for businesses it's not great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796152)) "I am a big fan of OSM, but modern maps are not about street names and building, but about POI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178665))
- Quirky, inconsistent tagging (4 comments): "OSM is amazing, but as a global project with thousands of contributors, its data can be... quirky." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790121)) "They also often include "pairs" of lighthouses (high / low, front / rear) where newer ones have replaced older ones" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49955481)) "OSM has a defined canoe=yes/no tag, but it’s supposed to be used for legal access, not navigability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155521))
- Lacking accessibility and sidewalk data (2 comments): "still biased towards the one-to-one assumption that most streets have sidewalks on both sides" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512675)) "accessibility-related data ( especially especially crosswalk info) is apparently sorely lacking in OSM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797148))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.openstreetmap.org/)

## Cite as

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