Overpass QL cookbook

Overpass API query examples

93 ready-to-run queries, each explained line by line. They run live on our full-planet server, so you see the real result. Copy one, change the place or the tags, and you're done.

Getting started

The building blocks: bounding boxes, areas, radius searches and output modes.

Your first query: cafés in a bounding box

The simplest useful Overpass query: every café inside a rectangle of latitudes and longitudes, with a line-by-line explanation.

Search inside a city by name

Use area["name"=…] to search inside the real boundary of a city instead of a rectangle. Example: every bakery in Vienna.

Everything within a radius of a point

Find features within a distance of a coordinate with the around filter. Example: pharmacies within 1 km of Times Square.

Nodes, ways and relations at once (nwr)

Why your query misses half the results and how nwr with out center fixes it. Example: every car park in Bern.

One bounding box for the whole query

Set a bounding box once in the settings line instead of repeating it in every statement. Example: benches and waste baskets in the old town of Bern.

Several tags at once (union)

Combine several searches with a union to find features tagged in different ways. Example: all drinking water sources in Zürich.

Food & drink

Cafés, restaurants, pubs, bakeries and drinking water.

Drinking water fountains in a city

Find every public drinking water fountain in a city. Example: the 2,000+ nasoni of Rome.

All cafés in a city

List every café in a city, as points or buildings. Example: Lisbon.

Vegan and vegetarian places

Find restaurants, cafés and shops with vegan options using the diet:vegan tag. Example: Berlin.

Restaurants by cuisine

Filter restaurants by the cuisine tag. Example: every pizzeria in Naples.

Pubs in a city

Find all pubs in a city. Example: Dublin, with names, opening hours and more.

Breweries in a country

Search a whole country by ISO code. Example: every brewery in Belgium.

Supermarkets open on Sunday

Search inside opening hours with a regular expression. Example: supermarkets in Zürich that open on Sundays.

Shops & services

Shops, brands, pharmacies, banks, schools and other everyday places.

Migros supermarkets in Switzerland

List every store of a retail chain with the brand tag. Example: all Migros supermarkets in Switzerland.

All locations of a chain by Wikidata ID

Find every outlet of an international chain with brand:wikidata. Example: McDonald’s restaurants in Switzerland.

Pharmacies in a city

Find every pharmacy in a city, including dispensing information. Example: Madrid.

ATMs and banks

Find cash machines and bank branches with one regular expression. Example: Singapore.

Hospitals in a country

List every hospital in a country, mapped as points, buildings or campuses. Example: Ireland.

Schools in a city

Find all schools in a city, with their grounds. Example: Amsterdam.

Post boxes in a city

Find every post box, with collection times. Example: Edinburgh.

Wheelchair-accessible public toilets

Combine two tags to find accessible facilities. Example: wheelchair-accessible toilets in Barcelona.

Glass recycling points

Find recycling containers by the materials they accept. Example: bottle banks in Geneva.

Embassies and consulates

Find diplomatic missions with the office=diplomatic tag. Example: embassies in Bern.

Places with free Wi-Fi

Find cafés, libraries and other places that offer free internet access. Example: Barcelona.

Transport

Stations, stops, lines, roads, parking and charging.

Bus stops in a city

Find every bus stop in a city. Example: Helsinki.

Train stations in a country

List every railway station in a country. Example: Switzerland.

Metro lines of a city

Get the routes of a metro network with their geometry and colours. Example: the Paris Métro.

Tram network

Draw the tram network of a city from its route relations. Example: Zürich.

One bus line by its number

Find a single bus or trolleybus line by its ref and get its route. Example: line 31 in Zürich.

EV charging stations

Find electric vehicle chargers with their sockets and operator. Example: Oslo.

Car parks with their capacity

Find car parks and read the number of spaces. Example: Munich.

International airports worldwide

A worldwide query without area: every airport tagged as international, with IATA and ICAO codes.

Motorway network of a country

Get every motorway segment of a country with its geometry. Example: Switzerland.

Speed cameras

Find fixed speed cameras in a country. Example: the Netherlands.

Ferry routes

Draw the ferry routes of a country. Example: the Greek islands.

Cycling & walking

Cycleways, bike sharing, hiking routes and footpaths.

Cycleways and bike lanes

Map the cycling infrastructure of a city: separate cycleways plus lanes and tracks along roads. Example: Copenhagen.

Bike sharing stations

Find bike rental and sharing docks. Example: the Vélib’ stations of Paris.

Hiking routes in a region

Get marked hiking trails as route relations with their geometry. Example: around Zermatt.

Steps and stairs in a city

Find every flight of steps in a city, useful for accessibility and routing. Example: hilly Lisbon.

Ski lifts and cable cars

Draw every aerial lift of a ski area. Example: Zermatt.

Playgrounds

Find every playground in a large city. Example: Greater London.

Nature & outdoors

Peaks, lakes, rivers, parks, trees, beaches and protected areas.

Peaks higher than 4000 m

Compare numbers with an if: filter. Example: every Alpine summit above 4000 metres.

Named lakes of a country

Get lake outlines, including multipolygons, with their names. Example: Switzerland.

Rivers of a country

Draw the river network of a country from its waterway lines. Example: Slovenia.

Parks in a city

Get park outlines with their names. Example: Manhattan.

Trees by genus or species

Query the street trees of a city by genus. Example: the lime trees (Tilia) of Vienna.

Viewpoints

Find scenic viewpoints in a region. Example: around Lake Lucerne.

Campsites in a country

Find campsites with their facilities. Example: Norway.

Beaches

Find every beach on an island. Example: Mallorca.

National parks and nature reserves

Find protected areas by protection class. Example: Switzerland.

Glaciers

Draw glacier outlines in a mountain range. Example: the Bernese Alps.

Mountain huts

Find staffed and unstaffed mountain huts. Example: Switzerland.

Elevation & profiles

Heights of peaks, huts, passes and stations, the vertical rise of lifts, route profiles and sea depths.

Peaks with their height from elevation data

Add a height to every summit with elevation=1 and compare it with the ele tag of OpenStreetMap. Example: the peaks around Zermatt.

Mountain huts and their altitude

Every mountain hut in a region with its altitude, highest first, from elevation=1. Example: the canton of Valais.

Ski lifts and cable cars: vertical rise

The bottom and top height of every lift, from out geom with elevation=1. Example: the lifts of Zermatt, sorted by vertical rise.

Road passes and their height

Find the mountain passes on the main roads of a country and add their height. Example: the road passes of Switzerland, highest first.

The highest train stations

List the railway stations of a country by altitude with elevation=1, and see why stations in tunnels read too high. Example: Switzerland.

Lakes and their surface elevation

The water level of every named lake in a country from elevation=1. Example: Switzerland, from the highest mountain lakes down.

Elevation profile of a mountain railway

Draw the climb of a railway line from its route geometry and the elevation profile API. Example: the Pilatus railway, the steepest rack railway.

Elevation profile of a hiking route

Distance, ascent and descent of a hiking route from OpenStreetMap, with its elevation profile. Example: the Matterhorn Trail in Zermatt.

Offshore wind turbines and the water depth

The sea depth at every turbine of offshore wind farms, from the GEBCO grid via elevation=1. Example: the German Bight.

Buildings & places

Buildings, addresses, land use, landmarks and boundaries.

Building outlines

Get every building footprint in a small area. Example: the old town of Bern.

Tall buildings by number of floors

Find buildings with 15 or more floors using a numeric if: filter. Example: Frankfurt.

Vineyards

Draw land use areas such as vineyards. Example: the Lavaux terraces on Lake Geneva.

All addresses on a street

List every house number on a street. Example: Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich.

Places of worship

Find churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, with religion and denomination. Example: Kraków.

Castles in a region

Find castles, palaces and fortresses. Example: Rhineland-Palatinate.

Museums in a city

Find museums and galleries. Example: Berlin.

The boundary of a country

Get the outline of a country as a polygon. Example: Liechtenstein.

Municipalities of a region

Get all municipal boundaries inside a region. Example: the canton of Zug.

Cities and towns of a country

List places by size with the place tag, including population. Example: Italy.

Which areas contain a point

Reverse lookup with is_in: list the country, region and municipality of a coordinate.

Infrastructure

Power, telecoms and emergency infrastructure.

High-voltage power lines

Draw the power transmission grid of a region. Example: the Swiss Plateau.

Wind turbines

Find every wind turbine in a country. Example: Denmark.

Power plants by source

List power plants with their energy source and output. Example: Spain.

Telecom masts and towers

Find communication towers and masts. Example: the Netherlands.

Defibrillators (AEDs)

Find public defibrillators. Example: Switzerland, where volunteers mapped over 17,000.

Fire hydrants

Find fire hydrants with their type and diameter. Example: Lausanne.

Data quality

Find missing tags, fixme notes and outdated features to improve the map.

Features without a name

Find features that miss a tag, here restaurants without a name, to improve the map. Example: Prague.

Shops without opening hours

Find shops that are missing opening hours, a common mapping task. Example: Ljubljana.

Fixme notes

Find everything mappers flagged for review with a fixme tag. Example: Luxembourg.

Disused and closed features

Find features marked as disused with lifecycle prefixes. Example: Bern.

Peaks without an ele tag

Find summits that have no height in OpenStreetMap, with a reference height from the elevation model. Example: the Valais and Mont Blanc.

Advanced techniques

CSV export, counting, statistics, polygons, intersections and set operations.

Export results as CSV

Get a spreadsheet instead of JSON with [out:csv]: choose the columns, header and separator. Example: hotels in Geneva.

Count features without downloading them

Use out count to get only the number of matching elements. Example: how many trees Vienna has mapped.

Count values of a tag

Group and count with a for loop and make: how many restaurants of each cuisine. Example: Zürich.

Total length of cycleways

Compute a sum over geometries with make and length(). Example: kilometres of cycleways in Bern.

Cafés near train stations

Search around the results of another search: every café within 150 m of a station. Example: Zürich.

Search inside your own polygon

Use the poly filter to search inside any shape you draw. Example: restaurants in a part of Midtown Manhattan.

Where two streets cross

Find the intersection node of two named streets with set intersection. Example: Langstrasse and Badenerstrasse, Zürich.

Ways with their nodes (recurse down)

The classic (._;>;); out; pattern: get ways together with the nodes that give them coordinates. Example: Langstrasse, Zürich.

Shops inside a mall

Turn a mapped building into an area with map_to_area and search inside it. Example: Sihlcity, Zürich.

Regular expressions on tag values

Match several values, parts of values and any case with ~ and ,i. Example: sushi and ramen places in Hamburg.

Guides

Help with errors and limits, setting up tools and libraries, and elevation data. All guides →

Errors and limits

Stuck with errors or limits on a public Overpass server? Start here.

overpass-api.de: “429 Too Many Requests”

Why the public server rejects your queries, how its slots work, and how to stay within its limits.

Overpass API errors explained

429, 504, “runtime error: Query timed out”, “out of memory”, empty results: causes and fixes, with retry code.

Overpass API alternatives

Public instances, self-hosting and hosted plans compared, and when you need which.

Tools and libraries

Point your tools at another Overpass server, step by step. Tested with the current versions.

Overpass Turbo: use another Overpass server

Where the server setting is, the exact URL format, and what to check when Turbo shows an error.

QuickOSM (QGIS): change the Overpass server

Add a server in the QuickOSM settings, or in custom_config.json on older versions, and use it in Processing.

OSMnx: custom Overpass server and node elevations

Set overpass_url, avoid a 60-second pause before every query, and add node elevations without a Google key.

osmdata (R): use another Overpass server

set_overpass_url() in the R package osmdata, with the key kept out of your scripts.

Overpass API in Python

requests, overpy and overpass: query any Overpass server from Python, with retries and GeoJSON.

Elevation

Heights and depths for points, routes and GPX tracks, and how the elevation APIs compare.

Run these with your own key

Every example works unchanged on overpass.ch: full planet, updated every minute, no shared rate limits. The free plan is enough to try them all.

Get a free key Documentation