Our new openrouteservice web client is now online at routing.heigit.org. It replaces the two existing clients at OpenRouteService route planner – directions, isochrones and places and Openrouteservice Maps , which we will shut down on November 16, 2026. In the same week, we will also switch off the deprecated API URL openrouteservice API . If your applications still send requests to the old URL, please move them to the new HeiGIT API URL before then.
For several years, we have maintained two web clients alongside the public API. Besides of operational knowledge we gained a significant understanding of what our users need and want. Combining our two old ones into a new and streamlined dashboard makes openrouteservice easier to maintain and to use and our innovations and ideas directly support another Open Source project. This will free up time and space for our team to focus on new projects and to bring fresh ideas into the openrouteservice ecosystem.
We know that many of you have worked with the old clients for a long time and are used to the way they worked. With the new one we focused first on providing the base functionality and quality instead of feature completeness. Not everything the API provides is or will be part of the new Dashboard. Howerver, we will continue to implement features that stood the test of times with the old dashboards. We thank you for choosing our tools and for the feedback that shaped both of them.
What the new client offers
The new client is based on the open-source geoportal Masterportal and uses the new HeiGIT API URL. Besides the core routing functions, it brings two improvements:
- Drawing and editing areas to avoid is now easier.
- You can navigate the map directly to a set of coordinates.
Features that are no longer or not yet available
The new client focuses on the most frequently used functions. Therefore, the following features of the old clients are not part of it.
- Multiple basemaps
- Extra information overlays such as steepness, surface and way type
- Customization of the base URL and endpoints
- Round trips
- Differentiated border avoidance
- Maximum speed settings
- Some profiles: goods truck, forestry truck, road bike, mountainbike, E-Bike and hiking.
- Highly customizable isochrone limits and intervals
- Alternative routes
- Permalinks for sharing routes
Most of the routing options remain available through the openrouteservice API. Please let us know in the openrouteservice forum which features you miss most.
Looking forward
Saying goodbye to the classic and the current client is bittersweet, since both played an important role in the history of openrouteservice. The project started around 2008 as a small research project of the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University. Today, it is a widely used open-source routing platform with more than 400,000 registered users.
Based on OpenStreetMap data, openrouteservice offers routing, isochrones, matrices, vehicle routing optimization and specialized algorithms for disaster response and accessibility analysis. Researchers, developers, NGOs and public organizations around the world use its public API. We thank everyone who used, tested and improved the old clients over the years.
We look forward to your feedback on the new one: routing.heigit.org
