It's timing estimates are often 5-15 minutes off Apple Maps, which I find accurate, on ~two hour drives, but I imagine it depends on the traffic.

To improve OpenStreetMap, which CoMaps uses as the data source, I use StreetComplete[1]–it puts quests around your location which ask you questions, it's user-friendly. A thoughtful feature is that it lets you download data in a location on wifi, in case you didn't want to use cellular.

OpenStreetMap is like Wikipedia for mapping, anyone can contribute and improve the map, and StreetComplete is like Pokemon Go in the sense that you walk around and complete quests, except StreetComplete helps humanity, while Pokemon Go[2]....

I should check to see if I can notice my StreetComplete edits getting onto CoMaps. Might be hard because they're often about accessibility at crosswalks. I've seen quests asking the number of stairs in a staircase. Seriously, is there anything they don't collect?

[1] https://streetcomplete.app/

[2] Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487029 26 days ago 317 comments

What I find interesting to see, and I think it's not just me who can see this - that basically every mention of CoMaps and why it is good and Organic is bad is it not only seems to be mostly written not by a regular users, but by people who contribute to CoMaps (!) - they all fail to show why exactly anybody should migrate from established app with authors who have years of experience of making Maps.Me and OM - to a basically a no-name (based on downloads) clone who is made by... "community"? We don't even know who that is, original developers and people with experience are not involved.

All the talk is not about functionality of the app or anything which is actually important to users - it's all basically complaints about some kind of _internal drama_, add some misleading stuff about "dying project" or "lost community" from some commenters. So many cries about "ads" which are not actually ads but affiliate links in hotels POI which nobody clicks anyway, it's so mild it's just weird to lament about, at least I as a long time user see no issue at all.

I can advise CoMaps community to focus on developing the app which can actually make real users migrate and use because of functionality, speed or other things that matter, instead of making your community look toxic because of this trash-talk. Show real improvements in comparison with OM - make live maps updates like OSMAnd, make bookmark folders with specific colors tied to it, make app barely eat any battery, make convenient and powerful interface to add data to the map - then people will move. But for now Organic Maps is totally fine and many people like me see no reason to move from it anywhere.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794575

https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/

> Despite being advertised as a community-driven project, key decisions, including financial management, partnerships (with Kayak, for instance), and the inclusion of proprietary components in the code were made by a small group of shareholders, often without input from the broader contributor community.

    - a result 500 feet away that sounds nothing like what you searched for
    - a result 23 miles away that shares one word but nothing else
    - a result 572 miles away that has a business name that contains exactly what was searched
    - ... nowhere is there an exact full-name match that is 1.3 miles away, which can easily be found by exploring the map

OSM argues that it's a "map database" but it stores labels like "opening hours" and "social media links" - why stop there? The UGC vs non-UGC debate has been the biggest crutch of all open map projects and no one managed to solve it yet.

Is there any standard protocol/format for "layers" that could be added to such Map apps?

Let's say I want to write a plugin to add my own kind of data, and then I want to export this new kind of data so that someone can import them.

Or I want to create a website with my own data on top of existing one.

My only complaint to OrganicMaps was the slowness to calculate a direction, which in part is certainly because the path is calculated locally instead of some cloud server but old garmin devices also weren't online and can calculate paths on far less powerful hardware. So I'm guessing there is room for improvement on that part.

Map rendering is nice, and crisp.

Functionality really is bare-bones, though.

So for example there is a metro layer - but it's subway only.

No trams. I kinda need trams where I am - they're a major part of the public transport system, more so even than the metro.

Problem is of course a lot of people need a lot of different things, maybe you end up looking like OsmAnd, which much as it is irreplaceable, the config/setup is a bit of an upturned spaghetti bowl.

I'm still mostly using Organic Maps though, and from time to time I switch to Comaps to see the differences.

In general I like the colors of CoMaps more than OrganicMaps (light theme, dark is so-so), but I still use OM because:

- OM shows colors for marked trails. Pretty recent feature and not as good as in Mapy.com, but at least I don't need to switch to Mapy.com just for this feature.

- recently OM added public transport routes. UX is quite bad, but it's much better that having nothing! It was quite useful at my last trip.

The nicest feature that CoMaps added recently are map updates that are independent to an app update, and they try to update maps like once a week. So it's much more probable that you will have more up to date data there than on OM. So I started using it more too :)

Let’s be clear, in the end I use Waze for routing due to the traffic updates, but I see sometimes outdated speed limits and know OSM is one of its sources.

Decent app though. I saw someone here mention proprietary code but I wouldn't worry about it, just install the F-Droid version. That's why I use F-Droid - to guarantee I don't get proprietary blobs.

I have also contributed to the OpenStreetMap by adding POI and requesting logic to be changed.

The only major issue which I got used to but sucks, is the search when it does not involved famous places or streets or both.

Streets will be shown as minor or major and alike, I do need to use Google Maps Browser version to find the place, and the on CoMaps manually navigate to said place.

But the fact that I get a map update a week, sometimes two maps update a week which other apps will take months and subscription, that alone is worth hustle.

That‘s the simple reason I‘m using Organic Maps and not taking a fifth look at CoMaps (and I downloaded CoMaps yesterday after the HN thread).

[Edit: To answer my own question a little bit, I found a post from September 2025 that compares OsmAnd and Organic Maps (which this project forked from): https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2025/09/OSMAnd_vs_Organic... .

I can't find anything more recent or for CoMaps specifically, other than auto-created "alternatives" pages. I would absolutely love to hear from anybody who has tried both!]

i think one thing that's going for google is the network effects and what it's able to do.

https://www.comaps.app/news/2026-05-12/celebrating-the-first...

Having a complete and updated registry of businesses with operating hours is the bare minimum, and OSM apps already struggle with that. I also want pictures of the establishment, pictures of the menu for restaurants, and price estimates for fuel and hotels.

I understand the cost of hosting and moderating that stuff is enormous, but that's what it will take for me to finally convert.

So nice to be able to do that locally and just send a .gpx file