OpenStreetMap is the open map of the world. These are the services that turn it into a fast, hosted (or self hosted) API you can actually build on.
OpenStreetMap is one of the great open datasets on the internet: a free, community built map of pretty much the whole planet. The catch is that the raw data is not something you want to serve yourself on day one. You’d be running an import pipeline, a tile server, a geocoder, and a styling stack before you ever showed a single pin. That’s the gap these providers fill. They do the heavy lifting and hand you a clean API.
Why pick an OSM provider over Google or Mapbox? Three reasons usually. It’s cheaper, often dramatically so. It’s open, so you’re not locked in: the data is the same everywhere and the tooling (MapLibre, vector tiles, GeoJSON) is shared, so moving providers or even hosting it yourself is realistic. And the licensing is permissive for commercial use, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap under the ODbL. Keep that attribution on your map and you’re good.
Here are six worth knowing, split into hosted services you call with a key, and open options you can run yourself.
Hosted OSM providers
1. latlng.work
latlng.work is a developer first location API covering geocoding, reverse geocoding, places and autocomplete, vector and raster tiles, static maps, and custom dataset tiles. The places data comes from the Overture Maps Foundation, so you get richer points of interest than raw OSM, and the whole thing runs on edge infrastructure with sub 50ms responses and a Python SDK.
The pricing is the headline. The free tier is 3,000 geocoding requests a day with no card, and the Pro plan is a flat $29 a month for a million geocoding requests. A million geocodes on the big platforms can run into the thousands. It’s the cheapest way to do high volume geocoding and tiles from a single vendor.
2. MapTiler
MapTiler is the tile specialist of the group, built on OSM blended with some proprietary sources. You get vector and raster tiles over a global CDN, a proper styling editor, and geocoding on the side. It’s a favourite for anyone whose main job is just a good looking basemap.
The free tier is a generous 100,000 tile requests a month with no card, and crucially, if you go over, the map just stops until next month instead of generating a surprise bill. Paid plans start around 25 euros a month. There’s also a self hosted server option if you want to run tiles inside your own network.
3. Stadia Maps
Stadia Maps is the privacy first pick. It serves vector and raster tiles, geocoding, routing, static maps, and satellite imagery, all built on OSM plus open datasets like Natural Earth. It hosts the much loved Stamen styles (Toner, Terrain, Watercolor), and it’s compatible with the Mapbox API, which makes migrating off Mapbox close to a copy and paste job.
New accounts get a 14 day trial of the Professional tier with no card, then drop to a free plan that’s fine for low volume and non commercial use. Paid plans start around $20 a month. The pitch they lean on is no ads, no tracking, and your data stays yours, which matters if you’re handling sensitive location data.
4. Geoapify
Geoapify is the all in one of the bunch. Geocoding, reverse geocoding, places, routing, distance matrices, isolines, and map tiles, all behind a single credit model where one simple request costs one credit. That makes cost planning refreshingly easy.
The free plan is 3,000 credits a day with no card and limited commercial use allowed. Paid plans are transparent and cheap, starting around 49 euros a month for 300,000 credits. It’s the one to reach for when you need a bit of everything from one vendor rather than stitching services together.
Open and self hostable
5. Protomaps
Protomaps is the clever one. Instead of a tile server, it packs an entire basemap into a single file called a PMTiles archive. You drop that one file on object storage, and the map library reads just the bytes it needs using HTTP range requests. No database, no server process, no scaling headaches. The whole spec and tooling is open source, the basemap is OSM only, and it works with MapLibre, Leaflet, and OpenLayers.
This is where it gets fun on a Cloudflare stack. You generate or download a planet PMTiles file, push it to R2, and serve tiles through a tiny Worker. Teams have reported cutting their mapping costs by around 90 percent doing exactly this, with setup taking under an hour:
# create the bucket and upload the basemap
wrangler r2 bucket create tiles
wrangler r2 object put tiles/planet.pmtiles --file=planet.pmtiles
# then point MapLibre at your Worker
# style: "https://your-worker.example.com/{z}/{x}/{y}.mvt"The hosted demo API is free for non commercial use up to a soft limit of a million tile requests a month, and commercial use is supported through GitHub Sponsors. One caveat: Protomaps is basemap tiles only. No geocoding or routing, so you’d pair it with one of the hosted providers above for those.
6. OpenFreeMap
OpenFreeMap is the genuinely free option. It’s an open source map hosting project that serves OSM vector tiles and a set of nicely tuned styles, and you can use its public instance with no key and no usage limits, funded by donations. The full planet is rebuilt weekly and stored on a public Cloudflare R2 bucket.
If you’d rather not depend on someone else’s free service for production, the entire stack is open and documented, so you can download the planet tiles and host it yourself. It’s a great starting point and a fair bit of insurance: free to begin with, fully self hostable when you outgrow it.
Quick comparison
| Provider | Type | What it does | Free tier | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| latlng.work | Hosted | Geocoding, places, tiles, static maps | 3,000 geocodes/day | OSM + Overture |
| MapTiler | Hosted | Tiles, styling, geocoding, self host | 100,000 tiles/mo | OSM + proprietary |
| Stadia Maps | Hosted | Tiles, geocoding, routing, satellite | Low volume + trial | OSM + open data |
| Geoapify | Hosted | Geocoding, routing, places, tiles | 3,000 credits/day | OpenStreetMap |
| Protomaps | Open | Serverless basemap tiles (PMTiles) | 1M tiles/mo (demo) | OpenStreetMap |
| OpenFreeMap | Open | Free basemap tiles, hosted or self host | Unlimited public use | OpenStreetMap |
How to choose
It really comes down to what you’re building:
- Geocoding or places at volume? latlng.work is the cheapest, Geoapify is the easiest all in one, and Stadia is the privacy conscious choice.
- Just need a hosted basemap? MapTiler’s free tier is hard to beat, and Stadia’s styles are gorgeous.
- Want to own your basemap? Protomaps on R2 and Workers, or OpenFreeMap if you’d rather not generate tiles yourself.
- Migrating off Mapbox? Stadia speaks the Mapbox API, so it’s the smoothest move.
The nice thing about staying inside the OSM world is that none of these are one way doors. It’s the same open data and the same open tooling underneath, so you can start hosted, move to self hosted, or mix the two without throwing away your work. That flexibility is the real reason to build on OpenStreetMap in the first place.
Pricing reflects publicly listed rates in 2026 and changes often. All providers above use OpenStreetMap data under the ODbL, which requires attribution on your maps. Verify current limits on each provider’s pricing page before you build.