Natural language to Overpass query translator
Write what you are looking for, and the translator writes the Overpass query and shows its results on the map. It reads English, German, French and Italian. It works with keywords and fixed rules, without a large language model, so the same words always give the same query.
Try it on the map
You can change the query below the map and run it again. Signed in, it runs with your own API key and counts on your plan; otherwise it runs within the limits of the demo.
- Paris
- Bahnhofstrasse Zürich
- sequoias in sequoia national park
- streets of Paris
- vegan restaurants in Berlin
- peaks over 4000 m in Valais
- restaurants on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich
- camping sites by a lake in Switzerland
- where can I swim in Zurich
- bridges over the Rhine in Basel
- hotels between Bern and Thun
- Thai food in Basel
- castles built before 1300 in Valais
- benches in parks in Lausanne
- Mammutbäume in Zürich
- fontaines à Genève
With your API key
The same translation is an endpoint of the Overpass API. It answers with the query in JSON, or with run=1 with the Overpass result of the query:
curl -G https://api.overpass.ch/v1/KEY/translate \ --data-urlencode 'q=cafés with outdoor seating in Zürich' -d run=1
Each call counts as one Overpass request of your plan, with or without run=1. The documentation lists the parameters and the fields of the answer. Get a free API key
What the translator reads
Place names and addresses in your text are looked up with our own geocoding API. The keywords are: at, near, around, between, in, inside, close to, next to, along, on, by, over (a river), across and of (streets of Paris) for places; within 2 km of and 10 minutes walk from for distances; here, nearby, near me and nearest for the map view and your position; over 4000 m, under, more than, less than, at least, at most, 4-star, built before 1500, after and 15th century for numbers and dates; open now, open today, open late, open on Sunday and open at 22:00 for opening times; tags written as tags, like amenity=cafe. Words like vegan, wheelchair or free narrow the search.
A query checks what Overpass can check. Opening times and the size of an area are not part of Overpass QL: on the map they are checked in your browser, and the answer of the API says so in notes.
Words from id-tagging-schema 7.2.0, taginfo and Wikidata, 2026-11-03; chains from the name-suggestion-index 8.0.20261101 (BSD-3-Clause). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).