About FreakMaps

I wanted to see the bigger picture. Not street level — country level. How does Poland's railway network compare to Germany? Where are motorways being built right now? What does an entire country's tram network look like in one view?

I couldn't find a tool that showed me that. So I built RailsMaps, then FreakMaps.

I'm an infrastructure enthusiast. I follow railway and motorway projects in Poland obsessively — proposals, timelines, what's under construction, what's just political noise. OSM reflects this accurately enough, and the community behind it is remarkable.

FreakMaps is where I put everything beyond rail — motorways, expressways, cities, connectivity and geography. Things I'm curious about, visualised the way I want to see them.

— Bartłomiej Banasik

Data Source

All map data comes from OpenStreetMap (OSM) — a collaborative, open-data project maintained by a global community of over 10 million contributors. OSM data is available under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).

Motorway and road data uses tags such as highway=motorway, highway=trunk and related attributes for speed (maxspeed), lanes (lanes) and construction status. City and town data uses place=city and place=town nodes with population and area attributes.

Update Frequency

Map tiles and underlying data are regenerated daily from the latest OpenStreetMap planet extract. Newly mapped motorway sections, corrected geometries and updated city data typically appear on FreakMaps within 24–48 hours of being committed to OSM.

Methodology

Raw OSM data is processed through a pipeline that extracts road and settlement features, classifies them by type, and renders them as vector map tiles. Motorways and expressways are categorised by speed limit, lane count, link/ramp structure and construction status. Cities and towns are classified by population, area, population density and connectivity to transport infrastructure.

Connectivity metrics — railway access, motorway access and combined infrastructure connectivity — are calculated based on proximity to the nearest transport node (station, motorway junction) relative to settlement area. Region boundaries follow ISO 3166-1/2 country and subdivision codes.

Coverage

FreakMaps covers 550+ countries and regions across all continents. Motorway and expressway maps are available for every one of them. City and town maps are still being built out and currently cover Poland and Czechia only:

Motorways & Expressways

• Default — full motorway or expressway network
• Max Speed — segments by posted speed limit
• Lanes — segments by number of lanes (1–8+)
• Links & Ramps — interchange connector infrastructure
• Under Construction / Proposed — active and planned projects
• Compare — side-by-side region comparison

Cities & Towns — Poland and Czechia only

• Default — all settlements with multi-filter support
• Population — settlements by population size
• Area — settlements by urban area (km²)
• Population Density — people per km²
• Railway Connectivity — rail access per settlement
• Motorway Connectivity — motorway proximity
• Infrastructure Connectivity — combined transport access

Exports and Customisation

Any map view can be downloaded as a PNG from the browser. Free downloads carry a FreakMaps watermark — the logo plus the site address across the image. An Export & Customisation Pass removes that watermark, unlocks creating and editing custom map presets, and licenses the images for commercial use — marketing, publications, websites and print. OpenStreetMap, MapLibre and Protomaps attribution stays on every export either way, because that is what the data licence requires.

Details and pricing are on the Export Pass page, and the licence wording is in the Terms.

Commissioned Work

If you need something the site does not do — maps of particular regions or networks styled to your brand, high-resolution renders for print, visualisations built from your own data, or maps kept up to date over a campaign — that can be built to order. Get in touch via the contact page.

Data Accuracy

Map completeness and accuracy depend on OpenStreetMap contributor activity in each region. European motorway networks and city data tend to be very well mapped; some regions may have incomplete speed, lane or population data. Where attributes are missing, features appear without that classification. FreakMaps displays what OSM contributors have mapped; it does not fill gaps or infer missing values.

Related Projects

RailsMaps — interactive maps for mainline railways, metro, tram, light rail, narrow gauge and monorail networks worldwide. Also built on OpenStreetMap data, also updated daily. Explore rail networks filtered by speed, electrification, track gauge and usage.