photon.komoot.io rate limits (and what to do about them)
If you're pointing an app at https://photon.komoot.io, you're using komoot's
demo server. It's generous, but it is explicitly best-effort — and if your
project grows, you'll hit its limits at the worst possible time.
What the policy actually says
Straight from Photon's own documentation, the demo server terms are:
You are welcome to use the API for your project as long as the number of requests stay in a reasonable limit. Extensive usage will be throttled or completely banned. We do not give guarantees for availability and reserve the right to implement changes without notice.
Three things to notice:
- There is no published number. "Reasonable" is undefined, which means you can't design around it — you find the ceiling by hitting it.
- The penalty is a ban, not a soft cap. "Throttled or completely banned" means a busy day can take your geocoding offline entirely.
- No availability guarantee. It's a demo. It can change or go down with no notice, and your app inherits that.
komoot themselves point heavier users elsewhere:
If you have a larger number of requests to make, please consider setting up your own private instance.
When this bites you
- A fleet or tracking app (e.g. Traccar) reverse-geocoding every position — hundreds of devices reporting every few seconds add up fast.
- A location-history import (e.g. Dawarich, Reitti) geocoding years of points in a batch — exactly the "extensive usage" that gets throttled.
- Any app that launches, gets some users, and quietly starts failing geocoding under load with no error you can act on.
Your options
| Option | Cost | Effort | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
Keep using photon.komoot.io | Free | None | None — best-effort, bannable |
| Self-host Photon | Hardware | High — 95 GB SSD, 64 GB RAM, import + upkeep | You own it |
| Hosted Photon (ChibiGeo) | Flat from €9.99/mo | Minutes | Hard cap + rate limit you can design around |
Self-hosting is the right call if you have the hardware and want full control — see what it takes to self-host Photon for the honest numbers.
If you'd rather not run 64 GB of RAM for a geocoder, ChibiGeo gives you the same Photon API with a defined, flat-rate cap (no overage billing), a real rate limit, a status page, and EU-only hosting — a drop-in swap for the komoot demo URL. Your app doesn't change; only the base URL and a key do.