About reviving the OpenTopoMap (Raster) tile service

[sletuffe]

Hi,

The tile server at https://opentopomap.org/ is going to survival mode and soon no tiles over 13 should be served, its data is from January 2023. @der-stefan announced that he is working on a Vector version of OTM and will probably abandon the Raster version.

I believe Vector tiles and Raster tiles are complementary. Not all smartphone apps, desktop apps, or even slippy maps are yet ready to switch to vector rendering. Furthermore, raster tiles will likely need to be generated server-side by TileServer GL and will still require a beefy server.

Plus, it may take time until the new rendering is on par with the original OTM (Mapnik) version. That is why I believe there is a need, most likely for some years to come, for several raster hiking maps to choose from. OpenTopoMap and OpenHikingMap could be a part of them.

alternative

I've been a happy user of OpenTopoMap's tiles for years on my hobbyist project : https://www.refuges.info/nav among other map services (and it won't be straight forward to move to vector tiles), or even using it personally on different Android Apps, and I am really thankful for that, but I'm sad to see it go.

Following the announce of Stefan in April 2025, since October I operate, for my hobbyist project, a replacement using the almost same style as OpenTopoMap along the OpenHikingMap I've been operating for 15 years.

And after seeing the announce of shut down, I'd be happy to share this tile service with other free projects that used to show OpenTopoMap maps.

My server with a demo map+documentation at https://openmaps.fr/ has both a functional (and partially mutualized) rendering world wide for OpenTopoMap and OpenHikingMap

Well then ? so far so good ?

Sadly no, those two rendering currently run on a slow, (4 cores, No NVME but spinning disks) server that cannot handle the load of rendering requests expected to replace OpenTopoMap, inducing slow responses, CPU load, while this server is also used for other tasks.

For those reasons, I'd like to continue operating those rendering, but on one (or ideally two servers). And that, I can't personally financially afford.

During the mean time, this server can be used as an OpenTopoMap replacement, following this Tiles Usage Policy but I doubt it can handle too high of a load.

Funding based on donations

The donation page, explaining what hardware is required and what are the cost is :
donation page, and funds usage

Funding Goals

Hardware

See down there details of the strictly minimum hardware requirements.
After a few searches, the cheapest Server I could find meeting those requirements is https://eco.ovhcloud.com/fr/soyoustart/sys-1/ (disabling the RAID redundancy)
For 960 € / Year
Other ideas of hardware are welcome

And Given the 2019 load on the tile.opentopomap.org der-stefan/OpenTopoMap#217 (comment) (11 TB of tiles served) it might not even be enough now.
So, If I can raise enough funds, I could rent another identical server to handle the load, a fail-over in case of problems, and uptime during re-import or maintenance.

Tiles Usage Policy

I still plan to offer access to those rendering free of charge, without API key. Tiles would be under CC-BY-SA License.
Tiles Usage Policy

However the past has proven that full openness has caused load problems on opentopomap.org, so I would like as the first phase to allow high volume accesses to free projects only (Website, smartphone Apps, Desktop Apps) free as in "Free beer".

To be discussed

• Does a non free app should still be allowed if a payment for the hardware is done ?
• Should this repo of OpenTopoMap, be transfered to a team, or me to re-take control of the code ? (knowing that I'm not interested in maintaining a Garmin version)
• Should the domain name opentopomap.org be kept for the future vector version of stefan, or for continuity of tile serving be transfered to me ?

Minimum hardware requirements based on current status of OpenHikingMap

4 cores / 3Ghz
64 GB RAM
Disk :
~1,1TB mod_tile/hiking (Cached tiles for OpenHikingMap)
~1.5TB (expected) mod_tile/otm (Cached tiles for OpenTopoMap)
~860GB postgresql/ (Contours + osm2pgsql db)
~60GB mapnik-data/hillshade
~300GB for temporary import

Total : ~3.8 TB on NVMe drives

Comments

Comments, ideas, suggestions, alternatives are very welcome.

[Cyberes]

I need a topo map based on OSM for my GeoVault project. Would be happy to do it via API keys and pay a small fee based on my usage if that means I don't have to worry about quotas and rate limiting.

Also, I would suggest looking into some hybrid cloud approach. Do the processing on your own hardware in your own home and then send the final tiles to be cached and distributed on some cloud server or CDN. This way the cloud server can be a lot cheaper since it only distributes the final result.

[sletuffe]

Hi,
Is your project open-source ? Looks like yes, then my first objective is to serve tiles freely for open or free projects. So your project qualifies for free access. And as long as your usage does not over-load the server, there are no reasons for me to activate quotas.
That does not mean financial support isn't accepted as donation, but that mean your access would be granted no matter if you donate or not for server fundings.

As of and API with keys to restrict or prioritize accesses, I have nothing ready for that right now, but that might be an idea :

• Free access to open or free project but with per IP rate limiting
• Paid accesses to any project, with API keys, higher tiles requests quotas to finance the server(s) + time

But as of now, my goal was not to move to a commercial service (with all the billing, quota, paperwork implied), because there allready are plenty, but more on a donation funded server, open for free projects without SLA or guarantees.

[sletuffe]

Hello,

On https://opentopomap.org/about#backup Stefan added this information :

The main server will be shut down on 07.01.2026

This motivated me for a pre-chrismas gift (well, hem, no, I still would like help funding it !) : A brand new 8 core Xeon E-2288G3 + 3 * 2To NVMe + 64 Go RAM for 889 € / year
This server is now operational and replaces the slow, spinning disks only, previous server rendering. The tile rendering process or import is now blazing fast and should be able to serve Millions of tiles per day.
I've imported OSM datas from mid November, but should be able to do more regular imports.

No more reasons not to use it, while still respecting the Tiles Usage Policy