Openmaps.fr is a free Tile Map Service based on OpenStreetMap data providing 2 maps:
- OpenTopoMap-R – a near-clone of OpenTopoMap
- OpenHikingMap – another map for hiking (git repo)
All styles and code are released as free software (Check each one's specific license) on their GitHub repos.
The service is free to use for non-commercial projects with a reasonable tile consumption. Current restrictions are that any single IP requesting more than 5000 tiles in one hour is blocked until next hour, and services downloading more than 500k tiles per month exceed the free tier and will be restricted. There are no formal guarantees: the service might stop at any time, or I may throttle or block sources that generate excessive load.
If you include tiles from tile.openmaps.fr in your project, you must accept and respect the Tile usage policy where you will also find the TMS URLs for the two map styles.
For commercial services or higher-volume usage, please contact sly@openmaps.fr to discuss a paid professional arrangement with fewer restrictions.
The service runs on an OVHcloud Black Friday offer: SYS-LE-5. An 8-core Xeon E-2288G3 + 3 × 2 TB NVMe + 64 GB RAM for 889 € excl. VAT / year. This should be ideal for handling intensive rendering and high usage.
To help finance server costs and keep the service functional, please check the Funding openmaps.fr.
- Real-time uptime monitor: https://status.openmaps.fr/ (gratefully provided by EDMC73, a French freelancer)
- Since 2026-06-28 OSM data should be kept up to date automatically (there may be a lag of up to one day).
Those maps are generated by mapnik as millions of 256×256 PNG image tiles. Storing all of them worldwide would be close to impossible. See the Tile usage policy: it is possible for small areas, but since downloads are limited you will not be able to collect much more.
Those applications natively include openmaps.fr tiles, no manual configuration needed:
AlpineQuest — a powerful Android hiking app.
IsoMaps — a cross-platform outdoor GPS app.
Why are there so few functions on the https://openmaps.fr interface?
The web interface is only meant to be a demonstrator for the background maps, testing, and comparisons with other maps; it is not meant... to be used for hike planning ;-) and I don't plan on improving it. Many other tools out there are much better suited for GPX generation, routing, elevation profiles or feature search.
Both OpenTopoMap-R and OpenHikingMap maps should be seen as "building blocks" for other better apps or websites to use as a background map.
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If you want to report problems about the tile.openmaps.fr tile service (outage, slow, unavailable) please use this github OpenMaps tracker
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If you would like to join the discussion or have questions, please use the discussion pages on the same github repo
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And if you want to contact me privately you can email me at sly@openmaps.fr