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OpenStreetMap GPS traces (openstreetmap.org/traces)
www.openstreetmap.org/trace/createCrowdsourced geodatastorage/openstreetmap-gps-tracesJSONcomparereport an errorprovider JSON
- Free allowance
- No published per-user quota and no quota endpoint; storage is GPX-only and appended to the OSM rails DB + a trace store.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- reported9 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-19checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-11-19
| Free tier | No published per-user quota and no quota endpoint; storage is GPX-only and appended to the OSM rails DB + a trace store. Effectively unlimited in count, tiny per unit. unit unlimited; metered on stored-bytes |
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| Price | none stated |
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| Identity | email email — verified the live form: fields are user[display_name], user[email], user[pass_crypt], user[pass_crypt_confirmation]. Email confirm, no affiliation, no review. |
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| Egress | free, no auth for public traces; individual points also exposed via the API 0.6 trace endpoints |
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| Per-object cap | not stated |
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| Retention | not stated |
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| Interface | rest web form + POST /api/0.6/gpx/create (401 Unauthorized without auth — verified) |
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| Tooling | any GPS app with OSM upload; gpx_files API; bulk via the rails API |
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| Composes with | Not a blob store — .gpx (+ .zip/.tar.gz bundles) only. Useful as an append-only time-series archive, not for arbitrary objects. |
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| Reliability | A trace is public-by-default unless you pick Trackable, so it is a poor fit for anything non-geographic. |
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| Evidence note | reported reported: the pages read on 2026-11-03 are three OpenStreetMap wiki pages. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Upload states that only GPX traces can be uploaded, several in one zip, tar or tar.gz file. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6 states that the GPX upload call requires authentication and that since August 2026 an upload must give the visibility trackable or identifiable (public and private now return an error). https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Visibility_of_GPS_traces states that Public and Private were deprecated in August 2026 and that points are available via the API for every visibility level. These are community wiki pages, not a vendor quota page. The absence of a per-user quota, the sign-up form and the API authentication-failure answer are not covered by those pages, and the clause that a Trackable trace is retrievable by id is not stated on those pages, so the rung stays reported. |
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| Parsed numbers | |
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Evidence 9
More fields 1
| dead end | {"failure_class": "quota","why": "No published per-user quota and no quota endpoint; storage is GPX-only and appended to the OSM rails DB + a trace store. Effectively unlimited in count, tiny per unit.","retry_when": null,"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"} |
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Unknown values 4
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- per object cap stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read