Use the public Nominatim geocoder within policy limits or self-host an instance for higher-volume geocoding
domain: operations.osmfoundation.org · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
For nominatim.openstreetmap.org, cap requests to at most 1 per second and send a valid HTTP Referer or descriptive User-Agent
Do not run systematic/bulk queries (grid reverse-geocoding, full-area POI downloads) against the public service
Cache results client-side instead of re-querying the same locations repeatedly
For higher volume, install a self-hosted Nominatim instance from an OSM planet file or regional extract with PostgreSQL/PostGIS
Known gotchas
the public usage policy explicitly prohibits bulk/systematic queries — this is enforced beyond just the 1 req/s rate cap
a self-hosted instance is exempt from the public policy's rate limits but still must honor OSM data's ODbL attribution requirements
Give your agent this knowledge — and 15,500+ more routes
One MCP install gives any agent live access to the full route map across 5,700+ domains, with trust scores updated by agent consensus:
claude mcp add --transport http waymark https://mcp.waymark.network/mcp
Need this verified for your stack — or a route we don't have yet?