Thunderforest is a global provider of activity and custom maps.
We have an enviable reputation in the industry for our experience, eye for detail and customer support.
We’re a small, thoughtful team who work remotely. We prioritise careful development over big disruptive changes. This means that you – and your end users – should always have a smooth experience with our maps.
Our customers include multi-nationals, specialist magazines, goods delivery providers and tourism organisations. Our maps can be used internally, or for customer-facing projects. They are suitable for small-scale use or for high-traffic sites and apps.
We update our maps whenever our source material – OpenStreetMap – is updated. This means that your end users will always see the most relevant and helpful data.
Read more about who we are and how we work
We want you to be able to use our maps in a way that suits you and integrates with your existing tech stack. There is no proprietary SDK or vendor lock-in.
Our main focus is on creating beautifully detailed maps that are loved by your users. As such, we’re tech agnostic in terms of map formats. They all have their pros and cons.
We offer raster tiles through our Map Tiles API and vector tiles through both our Vector Styles API and Vector Sources API. Static maps are available through our Static Maps API.
You can overlay your own data over all our map styles. We also provide a popular map customisation service. With over 15 years mapping experience, we can quickly create whatever style you need.
We’re a B2B company, so we work with developers and business owners, whose customers then use our maps.
We don’t directly provide maps to individuals who want to find out where to go, like Google Maps or Apple Maps.
Most of our maps are tailored to specific activities, so include plenty of detail. For this reason, we don’t usually go ‘head to head’ with competitors who provide bland, generic maps targeted at background usage.
We do customise maps for clients that want specific background maps. This is one reason why we recently developed ‘Atlas’, a style with a minimal colour palette that provides a good starting point for customisation.
Our main focus is on creating thoughtful activity maps with hand-selected detail and careful design.
You can test out Thunderforest maps by signing up for our free plan. You can then upgrade to a paid plan, if you want to continue using our maps for your apps or websites.
If you’re confident you want to use our maps, subscribe to a paid plan and get started straight away.
Once you sign up, you’ll be able to access your Thunderforest dashboard. This includes your API key, and tile layer URLs for different map styles.
You can then integrate our maps into your apps or websites.
Each tech stack requires a slightly different approach. We have documentation for OpenLayers, Leaflet and flutter_map. Just let us know if you’d like help with another library.