# Overpass Turbo > Web-based query tool for OpenStreetMap data. Extract hospitals, roads, buildings, or any mapped feature from the world's largest open geographic database. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/overpass-turbo **Official site:** https://overpass-turbo.eu **Category:** data ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** No user accounts, no personal data collection, no data storage — the attack surface is minimal. All queried data is public. HTTPS in transit. The privacy consideration is that your queries reveal what locations and features you're investigating, which matters for sensitive geolocation work. Use a VPN for sensitive queries. The tool itself is open-source (MIT license) and auditable. Adequate for journalism use with basic network-level precautions. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-11 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Data journalists who need geospatial data for investigations — locating every hospital in a conflict zone, mapping infrastructure before and after a disaster, tracking urban development patterns, or extracting any category of geographic feature that OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped. The tool has a real learning curve (its query language is not intuitive), but Bellingcat includes it in their open-source investigation toolkit for a reason: it unlocks a massive, free geographic database. ## Editorial take Overpass Turbo is a power tool, not a consumer product. It gives you a web interface to query OpenStreetMap's database of billions of geographic features — every road, building, hospital, bridge, military installation, and park that OSM's volunteer community has mapped worldwide. You write queries in the Overpass Query Language (or use the built-in Wizard for simple searches), and results render on an interactive map that you can export as GeoJSON, GPX, or KML. Bellingcat uses it for geolocation investigations. Data journalists use it to extract infrastructure data for entire countries. The catch: the query language is its own thing. It's not SQL, it's not a standard API — it's a domain-specific language with a learning curve. The Wizard helps for basic queries ('hospital in Damascus'), but complex queries require reading the documentation. The data itself is crowdsourced, so completeness varies by region. Western Europe and urban areas are mapped exhaustively. Rural areas in developing countries may have gaps. For journalism, the key advantage is that this data is open, free, and not controlled by any government or corporation. No one can revoke your access or change the terms. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Extracting geographic datasets for investigations. Finding all features of a specific type in a region (hospitals, schools, military bases, bridges). Comparing infrastructure before and after events. Supporting geolocation and verification work. Feeding data into QGIS or other GIS tools for further analysis. **Not for:** Making publication-ready maps (use Felt, Datawrapper, or QGIS for that). Real-time data — OSM data has variable update frequency. Areas with sparse volunteer mapping coverage. Journalists who need point-and-click simplicity with no learning curve. ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Completely free. No accounts, no plans, no limits beyond server capacity. - **Free option:** yes ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** unknown - **Data jurisdiction:** Queries run against public Overpass API servers hosted in Europe (primarily Germany). No user accounts or personal data stored. The underlying OpenStreetMap data is hosted by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (UK-registered charity). All queried data is public and openly licensed under ODbL. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Overpass Turbo uses tracking cookies for basic analytics. No user accounts exist — no personal data is collected beyond standard web server logs. All data you query is public OpenStreetMap data. Your queries are sent to public API servers and are not encrypted beyond standard HTTPS. There is no privacy policy in the traditional sense because the tool collects almost nothing. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Queries are sent over HTTPS but reveal what geographic features and locations you're researching. If your investigation is sensitive, use a VPN when querying. Download results and work offline in QGIS for analysis. Verify crowdsourced data against authoritative sources before publishing — OSM data can be incomplete or outdated. Be aware that query patterns could theoretically reveal investigation targets if monitored at the network level. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Open-source project maintained by Martin Raifer. Built on top of the Overpass API, which queries the OpenStreetMap database maintained by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (UK-registered charity). - **Funding model:** Volunteer-maintained open-source project. MIT licensed. Overpass API servers are funded by donations and operated by the OSM community. No commercial entity behind it. - **Business model:** None. Completely free, open-source, community-maintained. No revenue model. Sustained by volunteer effort and donated server resources. - **Open source:** yes --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/overpass-turbo Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology