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What is the Overture Maps Data and Why does it need an API?

Overture Maps Foundation is a phenomenal non-profit organization that provides free and open-source maps data to the public. This data is accessible as downloadable data dumps, which can be easily queried with tools like Athena, as well as through public datasets hosted in BigQuery and the Snowflake Marketplace.

However, working directly with these datasets requires a solid understanding of SQL, especially given their large size. Without careful querying, it's easy to incur high costs due to the extensive data volume. Experience in handling large datasets is essential to manage usage efficiently.

Introducing the Overture Maps API — a simple RESTful API designed for web developers to access Overture Maps data without needing to know Athena, BigQuery, or complex cost optimization strategies. This API abstracts the complexity, allowing developers to query the data easily and efficiently.

The API is available as a cloud service for testing and exploration. Additionally, a self-hosted version is offered for those who prefer to run it on their own infrastructure.

Getting Started​

Get started by making API Requests after Trying the Demo and reviewing API Documentation.

Or Deploy to your own infrastructure with the GCP / BigQuery guide.

Making API requests​

Make some test requests to the API to see how it works e.g.

Download all the US Starbucks locations as a JSON file:

curl -o all-starbucks-us.json -H "x-api-key: DEMO-API-KEY" -X GET -G 'https://overture-maps-api.thatapicompany.com/places'  \
-d 'country=US'  -d 'brand_name=Starbucks'

Or see 10 Tesco UK Supermarket locations in your terminal:

curl -H "x-api-key: DEMO-API-KEY" -X GET -G 'https://overture-maps-api.thatapicompany.com/places' \
-d 'country=GB'  -d 'brand_name=Tesco' -d 'limit=10'

... and then explore the other ./places endpoints and make API requests for Brands and Categories of places for each Country, or search by latitude and longitude.

Then build something cool with the data!

Deploying to your own infrastructure​

  • Deploying to Google Cloud Platform - GCP has a $400 free credit for new users and this is enough to run the API and get a feel for how it works.
  • AWS / Athena / Snowflake - Coming soon - please contact us if you would like to help with this.

Who are we & why did we make it?​

We are ThatAPICompany - a specialist dev Agency helping clients make amazing APIs that get used, and creating public APIs like TheCatAPI.com to help educate the next generation of developers how to use APIs to make amazing things!

We have built this API to make it easier for developer of any skill level to access the Overture Maps data, and to help the Overture Maps Foundation to get more people using their data.