Places within a radius

How to use it

1. 1

   Set the center

   Search for an address or a place, use your location or tap the map. The circle is drawn around that point.

2. 2

   Choose the radius and what to find

   Type the distance or tap a quick radius, in miles or kilometers, up to 15 mi (25 km). Pick up to 8 categories at once and, if you like, type a name or a brand to keep only those.

3. 3

   Search and use the list

   Press “Find places”. Tap a category in the count to hide or show it, “Map” to see a place on the map, and download the list as CSV, KML or GeoJSON. “Copy link” keeps the center, the radius and the categories.

What it’s for

• Before you buy or rent a home

  See which schools, daycares, grocery stores, clinics and parks are within half a mile of the house, about a 10-minute walk.

• A pharmacy right now

  The nearest pharmacies with their hours when they’re mapped, and the ones open 24 hours. Call ahead before you go: hours can change.

• On the road

  Gas stations and EV chargers within a few miles of the next exit or the town where you’ll stop.

• Traveling

  ATMs, pharmacies, supermarkets and stations around your hotel, in any country.

• Opening a business

  Count the coffee shops, bakeries or gyms within a quarter mile of a storefront before you sign the lease.

• Field work and deliveries

  Get the list of schools, parking lots or police stations in an area and take it to Google Earth or a spreadsheet.

How it works

The places come from OpenStreetMap, the free map built by millions of volunteers. Your browser asks Overpass API, a public service that searches all of OpenStreetMap, for the places in the categories you picked within the radius of the point. Each category is a set of tags: pharmacies are amenity=pharmacy, schools amenity=school, supermarkets shop=supermarket, and so on for all 30.

Each distance is measured here in a straight line over the Earth’s surface (on the WGS84 ellipsoid, with GeographicLib), from the center to the place’s point. If the place is drawn as a building or grounds (a school, a park), the point is the center of its outline, so a big park can show up a bit farther than its gate. The direction is the compass heading you leave in, to 8 points (N, NE, E…). Places farther than the radius are left out.

One search brings back up to 2,000 places. Overpass always says how many there are in total; if there are more, we tell you and suggest a radius where they all fit.

Names are matched ignoring capitals and accents (“cafe” finds “Café”), in the place’s name and its brand; with no category, only in the name of stores, services, hotels and leisure places.

How complete OpenStreetMap is, by country

OpenStreetMap is made by volunteers, so how complete it is varies from place to place. In cities across most of Europe (the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain…) nearly all pharmacies, schools, supermarkets, banks and gas stations are mapped; in small villages it’s more likely that one is missing.

In the United States, streets and buildings are very complete, and stores and services are well covered in big cities and for chains; suburbs and rural areas have more gaps. In Latin America, Africa and much of Asia, big cities are usually good and the rest is patchy: where there has been humanitarian mapping there are usually streets and buildings, but fewer shops.

Details are what’s least often filled in. In our two saved examples, of the 35 places within half a mile of Times Square, 60% had opening hours and 43% a phone number; of the 61 within 500 m of Puerta del Sol in Madrid, 28% and 38%.

Use it as a starting point: a place not showing up doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For anything important, check the official listing, such as the NCES school search for US schools.

Opening hours and 24-hour pharmacies

Hours come from the opening_hours tag in OpenStreetMap, as written by whoever added the place. We only spell out the days: “Mo-Fr 09:00-21:00” shows as “Mon-Fri 09:00-21:00” (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), and 24/7 as “Open 24 hours”. We can’t tell whether today is a holiday or whether the hours have changed.

Some countries, like Spain, Italy or Germany, have pharmacies on duty by rotation at night. That rota isn’t in OpenStreetMap: check your local pharmacists’ association or the notice on the pharmacy door.

If Overpass doesn’t respond

Overpass is a free public service shared by thousands of sites and people, and sometimes it’s full. We run one search at a time, with a time limit, and if the server asks us to wait, we wait. If it takes more than 12 seconds or doesn’t respond and the radius is 2 km (1.2 mi) or less, in the meantime we show the named places in the map’s own tiles (from OpenFreeMap, with OpenStreetMap data): without address, hours, website or phone, and without gyms, which aren’t in them. If the full list arrives later, it replaces them.