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komoot/photon

an open source geocoder for openstreetmap data

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komoot/photon has 3k+ stars and 350+ forks on GitHub, is written in Java, and was last pushed on Oct 16, 2026. Data as of . Signed-in members get hourly updates — create a free account.

Summary Information

Updated 1 hour ago
Type:Server / PlatformCategory(s):Geospatial & MapsSearch Engines & Vector DatabasesScience & Industry
Added to GitGenius on September 22nd, 2026
Created on August 20th, 2013
Open Issues & Pull Requests: 42 (+0)
GitHub issues: Enabled
Number of forks: 380
Total Stargazers: 3,127 (+0)
Total Subscribers: 77 (+0)

Repository Insights (GitGenius)

Median issue/PR response: 38.7 hours
Mean response time: 244.8 days
90th percentile: 224.5 days
Tracked items: 131

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Maintainer activity

2 people did triage or write work on this repository in the last 12 months.

Counts unlabeled, assigned, unassigned, milestoned, demilestoned, locked, unlocked over the last 12 months. These are issue and pull request events that require triage or write permission. Commits and code review are not counted. labeled and renamed are excluded because GitHub issue forms record the issue author as the actor. Figures from October 18, 2026. This count is not comparable across projects: each project's automation decides which of these events a person emits. How this is counted.

How this project is maintained

Roughly one issue in five opened in the past year never receives a reply. 59% of open issues come from outside the core team, a mix of external reports and the maintainers' own roadmap. 78% of issues opened in the past year have been closed, leaving a working backlog. Three people close 95% of everything that gets resolved.

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Issue Activity (beta)

Open issues: 27
New in 7 days: 2
Closed in 7 days: 2
Avg open age: 1,266 days
Stale 30+ days: 26
Stale 90+ days: 14

Recent activity

Opened in 7 days: 2
Closed in 7 days: 2
Comments in 7 days: 0
Events in 7 days: 3

Top labels

  • good for new contributors (5)
  • search config (2)
  • Database layout (1)
  • data (1)
  • duplicate (1)
  • testing (1)

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Detailed Description

Photon is an open source geocoder built for OpenStreetMap data that uses OpenSearch as its underlying search platform.

Photon solves the problem of efficiently searching and retrieving geographic information from OpenStreetMap. It indexes OSM data using OpenSearch, a scalable search engine, enabling fast lookups across billions of geographic features. The tool supports both forward geocoding (address to coordinates) and reverse geocoding (coordinates to address), with capabilities including search-as-you-type, multilingual queries, typo tolerance, location biasing, and filtering by OSM tags or bounding boxes. Data can be imported from Nominatim with continuous updates, or loaded from pre-built database dumps in concatenated JSON format.

Photon suits projects that need reliable, self-hosted geocoding without dependency on third-party services. It is particularly valuable for applications requiring high query volume, since the public demo server throttles extensive usage and offers no availability guarantees. Self-hosting requires Java 21 or later and substantial resources: a planet-wide database demands approximately 95GB of disk space and at least 64GB of RAM for smooth operation, with SSD or NVMe storage strongly recommended. Pre-built database dumps are available weekly for the world-wide dataset and selected countries, making setup straightforward for most use cases. The README does not compare Photon to alternative geocoders.

The project maintains active development with regular updates to its database dumps and ongoing refinement of its codebase. The tool receives continuous improvements to handle growing OSM data, with disk space requirements increasing annually. The project accepts community contributions and tracks issues and pull requests for feature requests and bug fixes. Installation and deployment are designed for accessibility, with clear documentation and pre-built binaries available for download.