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I'll do a shameless advertisement of our open source routing engine GraphHopper as one of our main advantage over the big companies is that we do not track user

I'll do a shameless advertisement of our open source routing engine GraphHopper as one of our main advantage over the big companies is that we do not track users. We rent our servers (not on AWS or GC :) ) and remove logs after max. 5 weeks https://graphhopper.com/maps/ https://graphhopper.com/maps/ (see our privacy policy for more details) We only keep them for debugging purposes and attack prevention. The maps layer (visualization) is done from an external company though: you can change this in the upper right corner to e.g. the original OpenStreetMap or Thunderforest. Additionally you get nice biking and hiking routes all with elevation, multiple other vehicle types like scooter or truck. And the possibility to export to GPX or using multiple via points. Additionally we try to update the road network as fast as possible (currently max. 1-3 days) from OpenStreetMap data, which is not always the case from other providers. Currently we try to revamp our UI to integrate new features like our alternative routes (you can trigger this via algorithm=alternative_route URL parameter). Now it is always important to ask the question "how do they make money?" and to understand why we can offer this all for free and even have the routing engine as open source: the simple reason is that we do not have to earn money with the end user. We created the company to push our open source projects (we also have jsprit - a toolkit for solving rich vehicle routing problems) and we try to support OpenStreetMap where we can (e.g. we are the only European corporate gold member of the OSM foundation) and do this via our growing SaaS where we sell subscriptions to many small and medium sized businesses. We do not have VC and so there is no pressure into things we don't want.

kqr 6y ago
I have only two things to say in response to this: a) I use GraphHopper with OpenStreetMap.org sometimes. It is good. Sometimes too good. Can I ask it to stick to bigger roads at the cost of other things like travel time? b) Thank you so much for bringing up the profit model and being transparent about it. Way too few people do that.
- karussell 6y ago
  Thanks :) Do you mean preferring bigger roads for car? This is tricky as optimizing for time sometimes introduces big detours and so we consider also distance (that can take you off big roads) and so yes, we have to improve this further. At least for (small) truck we have to improve there :)
  - kqr 6y ago
    For bicycle, in my case. Sorry, should have specified. Bicycle infrastructure is awful where I live so I need to spend a lot of cognitive effort just not being killed by the road. In that mental state I can't follow very complicated directions, so I prefer bigger roads!
    - karussell 6y ago
      Bike routes are currently heavily optimized already and sometimes I'm also a bit surprised about the good route quality ;) but actually this is only possible with the fantastic OpenStreetmap data. Still the most improvements are probably possible via data improvements in many areas. Still we will try to improve routes via "less turns" and more precise elevation data etc. For bike routing we only need to keep the balance between time, distance, simple route and beautiful route ;)
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Something you could do to be better than Google Maps would be to prefer stoplights over two way stops for left turns. That nearly got me sideswiped in SF once.
        karussell 6y ago
        Do you have an example? (avoiding left turns is the same problem like avoiding turns in general that is possible now with some new code we have since 1.0 or so, but we have to do more work to make it working in real world)
        nitrogen 6y ago
        I don't have a specific route I can link to, sorry. I was navigating in an unfamiliar area of SF once and directed to turn right one street before what turned out to be a major street, then make a left turn onto another major street. The directed left turn was from a stop sign onto a street with poor visibility and cross-traffic not stopping. If I had gone one street further before the right, there would have been a stoplight. Basically if you have data on the type of an intersection, favoring nearby controlled intersections for difficult turns would probably be helfpul, especially in hilly areas.
- paranorman 6y ago
  I’ll echo this, sharing your profit model here is the only reason I’m paying any attention to GraphHopper (awesome name btw) Thank you very much for doing that.
WilTimSon 6y ago
Is there any plan to add stuff like business addresses and all the other fluff of Google Maps? I'll happily use this for getting around but having to input the street address instead of just the name of a business can be a hassle. Either way, thank you for offering an alternative, this seems great.
- karussell 6y ago
  Actually POI search is already possible and works (according to our tests and effort) in some countries like in Germany ... but geocoding is another big topic besides routing (and map visualization) that you need for a good map application. And to make it working on a global scale is much more effort as the data quality in OSM and how addressing works can be very different for the different countries. BTW: we also provide our own geocoding which is based on photon an open source geocoding projects where we also invest, additionally to financially supporting the 'main' OpenStreetMap geocoder Nominatim project.
peterburkimsher 6y ago
I work for an IoT company doing vehicle tracking. We wanted to draw a line to show where cars had been. Google's routing algorithm insists on passing every point. GPS errors mean sometimes this resulted in routes going off a motorway, passing an (incorrect) point, and then rejoining the motorway. Graphhopper's map matching algorithm handled this perfectly, and we're a satisfied, paying, corporate user (since March 2019). Tech support was also extremely responsive and helpful when I needed to debug some edge cases (e.g. extremely long trips). My friend Jessie in Germany also uses Graphhopper for visualising research on tram lines, and her experience has also been excellent. I was not paid to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer. Use Graphhopper.
trevor-e 6y ago
I just tried it out and it didn't work for any addresses I typed in for Cambridge, MA. It would only show results for Cambridge, England =[
- karussell 6y ago
  Sorry to hear this. You can still right click the map and create routes if you like to try the routing feature. And to improve the geocoding: we support the work behind it: https://twitter.com/graphhopper/status/1263033938584502272 https://twitter.com/graphhopper/status/1263033938584502272
tvb12 6y ago
Sorry for the trivial question: should I leave house numbers off the start/end points? i.e. this works: <road name>, <zip>, <town name> but this does not: <house number>, <road name>, <zip>, <town name>

kqr 6y ago

I have only two things to say in response to this: a) I use GraphHopper with OpenStreetMap.org sometimes. It is good. Sometimes too good. Can I ask it to stick to bigger roads at the cost of other things like travel time? b) Thank you so much for bringing up the profit model and being transparent about it. Way too few people do that.

karussell 6y ago
Thanks :) Do you mean preferring bigger roads for car? This is tricky as optimizing for time sometimes introduces big detours and so we consider also distance (that can take you off big roads) and so yes, we have to improve this further. At least for (small) truck we have to improve there :)
- kqr 6y ago
  For bicycle, in my case. Sorry, should have specified. Bicycle infrastructure is awful where I live so I need to spend a lot of cognitive effort just not being killed by the road. In that mental state I can't follow very complicated directions, so I prefer bigger roads!
  - karussell 6y ago
    Bike routes are currently heavily optimized already and sometimes I'm also a bit surprised about the good route quality ;) but actually this is only possible with the fantastic OpenStreetmap data. Still the most improvements are probably possible via data improvements in many areas. Still we will try to improve routes via "less turns" and more precise elevation data etc. For bike routing we only need to keep the balance between time, distance, simple route and beautiful route ;)
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Something you could do to be better than Google Maps would be to prefer stoplights over two way stops for left turns. That nearly got me sideswiped in SF once.
      - karussell 6y ago
        Do you have an example? (avoiding left turns is the same problem like avoiding turns in general that is possible now with some new code we have since 1.0 or so, but we have to do more work to make it working in real world)
        nitrogen 6y ago
        I don't have a specific route I can link to, sorry. I was navigating in an unfamiliar area of SF once and directed to turn right one street before what turned out to be a major street, then make a left turn onto another major street. The directed left turn was from a stop sign onto a street with poor visibility and cross-traffic not stopping. If I had gone one street further before the right, there would have been a stoplight. Basically if you have data on the type of an intersection, favoring nearby controlled intersections for difficult turns would probably be helfpul, especially in hilly areas.
paranorman 6y ago
I’ll echo this, sharing your profit model here is the only reason I’m paying any attention to GraphHopper (awesome name btw) Thank you very much for doing that.

WilTimSon 6y ago

Is there any plan to add stuff like business addresses and all the other fluff of Google Maps? I'll happily use this for getting around but having to input the street address instead of just the name of a business can be a hassle. Either way, thank you for offering an alternative, this seems great.

karussell 6y ago
Actually POI search is already possible and works (according to our tests and effort) in some countries like in Germany ... but geocoding is another big topic besides routing (and map visualization) that you need for a good map application. And to make it working on a global scale is much more effort as the data quality in OSM and how addressing works can be very different for the different countries. BTW: we also provide our own geocoding which is based on photon an open source geocoding projects where we also invest, additionally to financially supporting the 'main' OpenStreetMap geocoder Nominatim project.

peterburkimsher 6y ago

I work for an IoT company doing vehicle tracking. We wanted to draw a line to show where cars had been. Google's routing algorithm insists on passing every point. GPS errors mean sometimes this resulted in routes going off a motorway, passing an (incorrect) point, and then rejoining the motorway. Graphhopper's map matching algorithm handled this perfectly, and we're a satisfied, paying, corporate user (since March 2019). Tech support was also extremely responsive and helpful when I needed to debug some edge cases (e.g. extremely long trips). My friend Jessie in Germany also uses Graphhopper for visualising research on tram lines, and her experience has also been excellent. I was not paid to say this, I'm just a satisfied customer. Use Graphhopper.

trevor-e 6y ago

I just tried it out and it didn't work for any addresses I typed in for Cambridge, MA. It would only show results for Cambridge, England =[

karussell 6y ago
Sorry to hear this. You can still right click the map and create routes if you like to try the routing feature. And to improve the geocoding: we support the work behind it: https://twitter.com/graphhopper/status/1263033938584502272 https://twitter.com/graphhopper/status/1263033938584502272

tvb12 6y ago

Sorry for the trivial question: should I leave house numbers off the start/end points? i.e. this works: <road name>, <zip>, <town name> but this does not: <house number>, <road name>, <zip>, <town name>