Panoramax

Feature	Value
Map Display
Display map	yes
Map data	?
Source	?
Rotate map	no
3D view	no
Shows website	?
Shows phone number	?
Shows operation hours	?
Routing
Routing	no
Create route manually	?
Calculate route	?
Create route via Waypoints	?
Routing profiles	?
Turn restrictions	?
Calculate route without Internet (Offline routing)	?
Routing providers	?
Avoid traffic	?
Traffic Provider	?
Navigating
Navigate	no
Find location	?
Find nearby POIs	?
Navigate to point	?
Navigation with voice / Voice guidance	?
Keep on road	?
Lane guidance	?
Works without GPS	?
Navigate along predefined route	?
Tracking
Make track	?
Customizable log interval	?
Track formats	?
Geotagging	photo
Fast POI buttons	?
Upload GPX to OSM	?
Monitoring ?
Editing
Add POIs	no
Edit / Delete POIs	no
Add way	?
Edit geometries	no
Edit arbitrary tags of existing OSM objects	no
Edit relations	no
View notes	?
Create notes	?
Edit notes	?
Work offline	no
Support imagery offset DB	?
Upload to OSM	no
Rendering ?
Accessibility ?

Panoramax is a federation offering geolocated street-level pictures. Pictures are offered through a decentralized architecture, with a set of free and open-source tools. In other words, it is "like a self-hosted Street View"^[2] that does not impose its own app and gives you the right to fork the server.

This wiki page describes the software and the ecosystem. To link an image on Panoramax from OpenStreetMap, see panoramax=*.

The main, metaphorical "selling points" are:

self-hostable, as a public instance or in your private organization
free- and openly licensed server (unlike Mapillary or Mapilio)
freedom to choose or develop your favorite client app
federation through a meta-catalog, which gives a single entrypoint (API, web viewer) to all publicly available servers

Instances

Services

Some services store in-app uploads on custom Panoramax servers, which means that photos are accessible not only through an in-browser slippy map (i.e. the default Panoramax frontend), but also via the federation API, the Panoramax API, and the STAC API.


URL	Region	Publicly viewable	Publicly editable	License	Other notes
https://api.panoramax.xyz	🌐 Global	Yes	No	Mixed	The meta-catalog list all pictures available across the public federation. After uploading an image, you may have to wait some time before it is visible on the meta-catalog^[3]. (The `api` part of the URL is important. Without it, you're redirected to https://panoramax.fr/)
https://panoramax.openstreetmap.fr	🇫🇷 France (and outside for tests)	Yes	Yes, with OSM-account	CC-BY-SA 4.0 (see below)	by OSM France In the short term, OSM FR can host pictures from the outside of France, but worldwide coverage is not sustainable in the long term, due to storage limits (and costs). Therefore, it is preferred that other local communities set up their own federated instances.^[4]
https://panoramax.ign.fr	🇫🇷 France	Yes		etalab-2.0	by Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière
https://panoramax.mapcomplete.org	🌐 Mainly Global	Yes	Yes, but only via https://mapcomplete.org, requires OSM-account	CC-BY-SA 4.0	Images uploaded in MapComplete are stored here
https://panoramax.multimob.be/	🇧🇪 Mainly in Belgium	Yes	No	CC-BY-SA 4.0	by Multimob.be
https://panoramax.liswu.me	🇹🇼 Taiwan	Yes		CC-BY-SA 4.0	by OSM-TW ?
https://www.panoramax.wales/	🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales	Yes	Yes, with OSM-account	CC-BY-SA 4.0

OSM-France adopted CC-BY-SA for the pictures, but also grant a right to create non photographic derivates under CC-BY or ODbL.

Community

Deploy your own instance

Check list

Tagging

panoramax=* - Associate a Panoramax picture to an OSM feature.

Contribute

Panoramax docs contribute

Development

Mobile App

Android mobile app for taking and uploading pictures (with its discussion forum thread); Android app can be downloaded from Google Play or F-Droid; iOS app from Apple App Store;
Baba - alternative Android and iOS mobile app for taking Panoramax pictures

Translation

Software

As Panoramax is a federation, the main matter is to agree on standards. Servers have to offer their pictures through a STAC API. Beyond that, any compliant server can be a part of Panoramax.

Main software used for Panoramax is listed below.

Server-side

All servers are running under the Panoramax API, which is fully free and open-source. It's a Python and Flask API, relying on a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS. It handles users, as well as uploading and serving of pictures.

Client-side

Many clients can be made available for Panoramax, as long as they accept STAC and/or WFS servers.

Clients from the Panoramax project itself:

Panoramax website, the front-end of public servers
Panoramax web viewer, a stand-alone JS viewer
Panoramax CLI interface, a Python-based CLI tool for uploading and downloading images

Clients using the standard STAC or WFS APIs:

List of STAC-compatible clients

Third-party clients:

Panoramax-js, a Typescript library with which one can upload images to a Panoramax instance and with some other API calls made available; developed and used by MapComplete
MapComplete, an OSM editor and viewer, lets users browse nearby pictures from Panoramax and also upload pictures to Mapcomplete's own Panoramax instance. They moved all old images (hosted on imgur) to their panoramax-instance. This is documented in this issue
OpenAEDMap.org loads images from panoramax, if linked with panoramax=*
OsmApp.org shows Panoramax-images as well but doesn't (yet) shows a correct attribution (as of 2024-11-21)
QGis plugin: https://gitlab.com/panoramax/clients/qgis-plugin
Panoramax for ArcGIS https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=97b27545e801478d9eb36d2a6fc9b63b
overpass-turbo.eu links to panoramax.xyz when a panoramax-hash is detected
Baba multiplatform mobile app: Google Play store

Requests for support

The community opened support tickets to add panoramax functionality on some issue trackers, such as:

OsmAnd request
Organic maps: streetview, add pictures
A plugin for JOSM has been requested here on the JOSM issue tracker. (there currently only exists a support for "Panoramax image positions" imagery layer, but you cannot click on it to show actual pictures)
Vespucci feature request here to implement Panoramax images layer has been implemented, and in upcoming Vespucci 21.2 one should even be able to contribute new pictures to Panoramax
CoMaps request is here (there already exists support for displaying POIs with panoramax=* tag in OSM, but not a full Panoramax image layer)

Use in OSM editors

iD integration

iD support with ability to filter by capture date, contributor and image type has been implemented, see screenshot below

Vespucci integration

Vespucci has supported display of panoramax images since March 2025, see https://vespucci.io/help/en/21.0.0%20Release%20notes/#panoramax-support

Statistics

Panoramax stats

Panoramax Weblate

Panoramax Weblate

Third-party viewers

In MapComplete, click a map feature, then click "Browse nearby pictures" in the panel at the right. This includes the pictures from the Panoramax meta-catalog - so not only the pictures that were uploaded to MapComplete.

Made possible by

https://gitlab.com/panoramax/gitlab-profile/-/raw/develop/images/sponsors.png

References

↑ https://panoramax.fr
↑ https://gitlab.com/panoramax/server/api
↑ Source taking MapComplete as an example.
↑ Message from the OSM FR infrastructure maintainer, in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 26, 2023; message in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 25, 2023.

[panoramax_fr-1] ttps://panoramax.fr

[gitlab_geovisio_api-2] ttps://gitlab.com/panoramax/server/api

[3] Source taking MapComplete as an example.

[4] Message from the OSM FR infrastructure maintainer, in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 26, 2023; message in #panoramax_fr:matrix.org, on Aug 25, 2023.

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Panoramax

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