[OSM-dev] Acceptable use of Overpass API?

Roland Olbricht roland.olbricht at gmx.de
Sun Apr 19 10:53:05 UTC 2015


Hi Nick,

> However I don't want users to have to download a huge OSM or GraphHopper
> file covering the whole of England and Wales: I would prefer users to
> download small tiles of OSM data (say 10km x 10km) of their local area,
> which could then be cached on their device. The conversion to
> GraphHopper format could be done on the device.

It is perfectly well within the usage policy. The quota, by the way, 
doesn't apply here because it is per IP address, not per appplication.

Such a tile is (gzip compressed) usually between 100 KB and 1 MB each. 
Thus, a user trying to download 10000 tiles would anyway exceed his 
mobile plan for the month.

> furthermore I could route requests through a
> proxy on my own server which ensures that no more than 5000 (to be safe)
> requests to Overpass per day are made.

While I appreciate that offer, the direct access is not a problem and an 
advantage in terms of quotas per IP. What I would rather want to ask you 
is to include a user agent.

I addition, both your users and I would be grateful if you can send the 
header

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

That will save bandwidth in particular on the mobile plans (and also 
speed up handling on the server side).

Thanks,

Roland




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