SHSelfHostIndex
PH

Photon

Fast, typo-tolerant geocoder built on OpenStreetMap

Maps & GIS ★ 3.1k stars Medium setup Apache-2.0

Photon is an open-source geocoder built for OpenStreetMap data that supports search-as-you-type and typo tolerance. Built on Elasticsearch, it returns results in multiple languages.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Search-as-you-type
  • Typo tolerance
  • Multilingual results
  • Downloadable prebuilt index

Strengths

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (3.1k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Java

Is Photon secure?

OSV.dev has no published security advisories for Photon's repository. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Photon replaces

Self-hosted Google Geocoding API alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Photon? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 87 · excellent

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Photon](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/photon.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/photon/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/photon/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/photon.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Photon"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/photon.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Photon
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/photon/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

Compare Photon

2 head-to-head comparisons.

Similar maps & gis apps