Minimum size of OSM maps by country

[Severin Menard]

Hi, 

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about the inequities between countries regarding the minimum size of OSM maps that can be downloaded. From my experience as a traveler, I had figured out that for some countries, only a large scale was available, and downloading was difficult when the internet connection was unreliable.

I used a script to rank the country information from https://download.osmand.net/list.php by file size within each subcontinent. For example, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, only has one map at a scale larger than 600 MB. 

There is little explanation for this situation except for a comment suggesting that a request for smaller map files was never made for these countries. In any case, I think it can easily be fixed.

Sincerely,

Severin

PS: Is there any data available on how many times each map file has been downloaded?

[Harry van der Wolf]

I do prefer OsmAnd as it allows me to download a bigger map covering a bigger area, but being in the Netherlands I have a very good internet connection almost everywhere.

It is possible to create your own maps using the tools OsmAnd provides, but it takes time to get to know them and make the files for the specific regions you want to download.

In your case you might take a look at Organic Maps (which you already mention in your blog post), which is also an open-source option and has smaller maps as it splits a country in more regions than Osmand does. But even then you can get over 100MB.

The reason for Osmand that some countries are only one map at level 1 and some are split up at regions on level 2, is indeed internal data size, where Europe is by far the best mapped area in the world. 

Everywhere the total map would exceed 2GB, the map is split into smaller sections. And I believe lately they decided to set the "split" at 1 GB.

For the rest OsmAnd wants to keep it as simple as possible and reduce the number of maps you have to download for complete coverage of where you are (or want to go).

Best,

Harry

Op zo 14 jun 2026 om 22:21 schreef Severin Menard <severin...@gmail.com>:

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OsmAnd" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to osmand+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osmand/292d10d7-aaf8-4b68-84dd-37daf94da0b2n%40googlegroups.com.