ES:Teselas

Tiles are rectangular slabs of ceramic affixed in a grid arrangement to your bathroom wall. For shops selling such ceramic tiles, see shop=tiles.

Here we are much more likely to be talking about map tiles:

• square bitmap graphics displayed in a grid arrangement to show a map
• We may also be talking about tiled map data.

This page includes lots of information and technical detail. If you want to use map tiles in your web page or application you can have a look at this tutorial about how to use OpenStreetMap tiles.

Graphical Map Tiles

Map tiles are typically 256×256 pixel images. e.g.:

this example tile

Tiles are not always in these dimensions; for example there could be 64×64 pixel images for mobile use, however 256×256 pixel images are a de facto standard. 515×512 pixel seems to be the usual size of high-resolution tiles.

A "tileset" typically includes enough tiles to form a very large image, if they were shown all at once, and also several zoom levels. Generally the idea is not to show them all at once, but to display a particular area of the map on a website. Normally this is done using a JavaScript map library to provide panning and zooming functionality, and request downloading of new tiles as necessary to show the user new areas of the map (a Slippy Map).

Using tiles

• Browsing#Layers explains the selection of tiles available for viewing on the openstreetmap.org homepage
• Mapnik – a popular tile renderer
• Kosmos Tile Map Server – windows tile renderer
• Tile usage policy
• Exporting calibrated maps list tools to have tiles compatible with specific embedding software
• Tiletool is a utility for map tile processing. It can generate lowzoom tiles combining higher zoom tiles, apply overlays over them and some other useful features.

Technical data

• Slippy map tilenames – calculate tilenames if you have coordinate
• Estimating Tile Disk Usage
• Tile water land status ([1]), index of which tiles are land, or water, on the OSM slippy map, this is a file available in SVN, in the png2tileinfo file.
• List of changed tiles, gets all tiles in a zoom level that have changed in the last 1h to 24h.

Development

• mod_tile Apache module that spawns processes to render mapnik tiles. See OSM-Dev mailing list "mod_tile / renderd issue" (May 2008)
• Tile cache, renders maps with mapnik/mapserver/WMS and cache them as tiles.
• OSM Mobile Binary Protocol, tiled OSM data (see also WhereAmI/OSM Binary Format and the Talk mailing list thread "mobile binary data" from 2008)

Servers

This is a list of online raster tile servers based on OpenStreetMap data. For the names of the physical servers that serve openstreetmap.org's map tiles, see Servers/tile.In the URLs provided ${X} and ${y} have to be replaced by the x and y Tile numbers and ${z} by the zoom level. Sometimes the $ is missing. In the URLS to Carto.com and some others there is also a {s} which should be replaced by the subdomain. Subdomains are used to help with browser parallel requests per domain limitation. These subdomains are typically single letters 'a', 'b' and 'c'. Refer to the provider documentation for details of available subdomains.

Base maps

Name	free/commercial	latency	IPv6	comment	tiles url	Tile example	source code
OpenStreetMap's Standard tile layer openstreetmap.org front page Tile usage policy compare	free, funded by donations		no		https://a.tile.openstreetmap.org/${z}/${x}/${y}.png https://b.tile.openstreetmap.org/${z}/${x}/${y}.png https://c.tile.openstreetmap.org/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/
German fork of the Standard tile layer openstreetmap.de map usage policy compare	free, funded by donations	minutely updates	sí	label in German and local language (transliterated where no name in Latin script is available), commercial and high-traffic use restricted	https://a.tile.openstreetmap.de/${z}/${x}/${y}.png https://b.tile.openstreetmap.de/${z}/${x}/${y}.png https://c.tile.openstreetmap.de/${z}/${x}/${y}.png	https://tile.openstreetmap.de/7/63/42.png	https://github.com/giggls/openstreetmap-carto-de/
Wikimedia Maps demo server https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps_Terms_of_Use			sí	Experimental	https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/kartotherian/kartotherian
OpenCycleMap OpenCycleMap compare	commercial, registration required		no	you need to register to use this, a free plan is available.	http://tile.thunderforest.com/cycle/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		unavailable, this is a closed source project
Humanitarian map style Humanitarian focused OSM base layer compare			no	map style info	http://a.tile.openstreetmap.fr/hot/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://b.tile.openstreetmap.fr/hot/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/hotosm/HDM-CartoCSS
OSM France Priority given to French names and symbols (baguette instead of pretzel for bakery!). Special display for sport fields. compare			no	Fork of openstreetmap-carto. Some newer features are sometimes experimented and are discussed on the French OpenStreetmap mailing list. Guided tour of improved features.	http://a.tile.openstreetmap.fr/osmfr/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://b.tile.openstreetmap.fr/osmfr/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://c.tile.openstreetmap.fr/osmfr/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/cquest/osmfr-cartocss map
wmflabs Hike & Bike Hiking map compare		~3 months	no	Using osmc:symbol=*	https://tiles.wmflabs.org/hikebike/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
wmflabs Hillshading shading compare		n/a	no		http://tiles.wmflabs.org/hillshading/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
wmflabs OSM B&W mapnik map grayscale compare		~3 months [2]	no		https://tiles.wmflabs.org/bw-mapnik/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
wmflabs OSM no labels mapnik map without labels compare		~3 months	no		https://tiles.wmflabs.org/osm-no-labels/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
Stamen Toner Black & White map compare	funded by donations	no data updates	no	Black&White, printing, uses Natural Earth at low zooms, retina tiles available variants available: toner, toner-hybrid, toner-labels, toner-lines, toner-background, toner-lite	http://a.tile.stamen.com/toner/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/stamen/toner-carto
Stamen Watercolor Artistic map compare	funded by donations	no data updates	no	Watercolor	http://c.tile.stamen.com/watercolor/${z}/${x}/${y}.jpg
Transport Map Transport map compare	commercial, registration required		no	you need to register to use this, a free plan is available.	http://tile.thunderforest.com/transport/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
Thunderforest Landscape Landscape map compare	commercial, registration required		no	you need to register to use this, a free plan is available	http://tile.thunderforest.com/landscape/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
Thunderforest Outdoors Outdoors map compare	commercial, registration required		no	you need to register to use this, a free plan is available	http://tile.thunderforest.com/outdoors/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
Öpnvkarte Transport map compare			sí		http://tile.memomaps.de/tilegen/${z}/${x}/${y}.png
OpenMapSurfer general map https://openrouteservice.org/terms-of-service/	registration required, free plan available		no	is a web map service with a couple of maps rendered with MapSurfer.NET, registration required
Carto Light ("Positron") general map Required attribution: "Map tiles by Carto, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL."	commercial, registration required, uses Natural Earth at low zooms, no_labels variant available		no		https://cartodb-basemaps-{s}.global.ssl.fastly.net/light_all/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
Carto Dark ("Dark Matter") general map Required attribution: "Map tiles by Carto, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL."	commercial, registration required, uses Natural Earth at low zooms, no_labels variant available		no		https://cartodb-basemaps-{s}.global.ssl.fastly.net/dark_all/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
OpenTopoMap Topographical Map	free, see https://opentopomap.org/about#faq		no	Topographical Map	https://{a|b|c}.tile.opentopomap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
Omniscale base map	commercial, registration required		no	coloured base map, greyscale version and coloured version with hillshading available

Overlay tiles

Name	free or commercial	latency	comment	tiles url	Tile example	source code
waymarkedtrails Hiking routes		1 day		Using osmc:symbol=*	https://tile.waymarkedtrails.org/hiking/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/waymarkedtrails/waymarked-trails-site
waymarkedtrails Cycling routes		1 day			https://tile.waymarkedtrails.org/cycling/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/waymarkedtrails/waymarked-trails-site
waymarkedtrails Riding routes		1 day		Horse riding, using osmc:symbol=*	https://tile.waymarkedtrails.org/riding/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/waymarkedtrails/waymarked-trails-site
OpenPtMap Transport map compare				Transport	http://www.openptmap.org/tiles/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/waymarkedtrails/waymarked-trails-site
OpenRailwayMap Railway infrastructure Usage policy compare	free, funded by donations, see policy			Railway infrastructure	http://a.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://b.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://c.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/standard/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/OpenRailwayMap/OpenRailwayMap
OpenRailwayMap Railway maxspeeds Usage policy compare	free, funded by donations, see policy			Railway maxspeeds	http://a.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/maxspeed/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://b.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/maxspeed/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://c.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/maxspeed/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/OpenRailwayMap/OpenRailwayMap
OpenRailwayMap Railway signalling Usage policy	free, funded by donations, see policy			Railway signalling and train protection signals	http://a.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/signals/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://b.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/signals/${z}/${x}/${y}.png http://c.tiles.openrailwaymap.org/signals/${z}/${x}/${y}.png		https://github.com/OpenRailwayMap/OpenRailwayMap
OpenSeaMap Sea marks				Sea marks only, background transparent	http://tiles.openseamap.org/seamark/${z}/${x}/${y}.png

Also see for example map compare service at bbbike.org. Please obey the usage restrictions of each tile server if you use it heavily!

More webservices to display different OSM based tiles are mapstyle.petschge.de and Leaflet Provider Demo.

Notes:

Tiled map data

• QuadTiles, a scheme to make OSM database indexed by tiles
• OJW's tile data server, first implementation of a cacheable data server, that servs data in the same way as the tileserver.
• Tile data server, generic definition of how data served as tiles should work. (written by ojw as well...)

Links

• Switch2OSM, The Basics This page gives some introductory information on the tiles, licence and JavaScript libraries to display the tiles.