Hiking Trails Worldwide Scraper

Scrape hiking trails from OpenStreetMap via the Overpass API. Search by country, region/state/city, or a custom bounding box. Get structured data on hundreds of thousands of hiking trails worldwide — names in multiple languages, GPS routes, length, trail markers, operator details, Wikipedia links, and more.

✅ Open data — built on OpenStreetMap, licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL). No legal grey area, no terms-of-service issues.

✅ Truly global — coverage spans Europe (incredibly dense), Japan (excellent), New Zealand, Australia, the Americas, and most national parks worldwide.

✅ No API key required — uses the public Overpass API.

Features

• Search modes: country (e.g. "Japan"), ISO code (e.g. "NZ"), region/state (e.g. "Bavaria", "California"), or bounding box
• Route types: hiking trails (route=hiking), walking routes (route=foot), or both
• Network filtering: only international trails (Camino, Appalachian Trail-tier), national trails (Te Araroa, Kumano Kodo), regional, or all local trails
• Length filtering: min/max km to exclude short paths or epic thru-hikes
• Multilingual names: pick a preferred language; original local names always preserved
• GPS geometry: optionally include the full waypoint sequence for each trail
• Trail metadata: colour, trail markers (osmc:symbol), operator, fees, opening hours, Wikipedia, Wikidata

Example output

{
  "osm_id": 173345,
  "osm_url": "https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/173345",
  "name": "Tongariro Northern Circuit",
  "name_local": "Tongariro Northern Circuit",
  "name_alternatives": {
    "en": "Tongariro Northern Circuit",
    "mi": "Te Awahohonu"
  },
  "ref": "GW02",
  "route_type": "hiking",
  "network": "national",
  "network_tag": "nwn",
  "operator": "Department of Conservation",
  "description": "One of New Zealand's Great Walks, a 4-day loop around Mt Ngauruhoe.",
  "length_km": 44.213,
  "roundtrip": true,
  "start_point": {"lat": -39.197691, "lon": 175.5459621},
  "end_point": {"lat": -39.1995736, "lon": 175.5428742},
  "bbox": {"south": -39.2124, "west": 175.5417, "north": -39.1322, "east": 175.6892},
  "way_segments": 56,
  "website": "https://www.doc.govt.nz/...",
  "wikipedia_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongariro_Northern_Circuit",
  "wikidata_url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1258134",
  "gpx_url": "https://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/api/v1/details/relation/173345/gpx",
  "source": "openstreetmap.org",
  "license": "ODbL - © OpenStreetMap contributors",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-11T09:20:35Z"
}

Usage examples

All hiking trails in New Zealand (national and above):

{
  "search_mode": "iso_code",
  "iso_code": "NZ",
  "min_network_level": "national",
  "max_results": 100
}

Hiking trails in California with GPS geometry:

{
  "search_mode": "region",
  "region": "California",
  "min_network_level": "regional",
  "include_geometry": true,
  "min_length_km": 5,
  "max_results": 200
}

All hiking and walking routes in a custom bounding box:

{
  "search_mode": "bbox",
  "bbox_south": 45.85,
  "bbox_west": 6.85,
  "bbox_north": 45.95,
  "bbox_east": 6.95,
  "route_types": ["hiking", "foot"],
  "max_results": 500
}

Long-distance trails worldwide (international tier):

{
  "search_mode": "country",
  "country": "Spain",
  "min_network_level": "international",
  "min_length_km": 100
}

Tips

• Don't know a country's ISO code? Use search mode "country" with the English name, or look it up: NZ, US, JP, FR, AU, GB, CA, DE, IT, ES, MX, AR, CL, PE, NO, SE, FI, IS, NP, ZA.
• For regions, try the local-language name if the English one doesn't work (e.g. "Bayern" instead of "Bavaria", "Hokkaidō" instead of "Hokkaido").
• Looking for famous long-distance trails? Set min_network_level to national or international, and min_length_km to 50+ to filter out short connectors.
• Include unnamed trails only if you specifically need exhaustive path coverage — unnamed paths often lack descriptions and quality varies.
• GPS geometry is heavy — a single 100 km trail can have thousands of waypoints. Disable include_geometry for lightweight metadata-only runs.

Data quality and coverage

OpenStreetMap is a community-edited dataset. Coverage varies by region:

• Excellent: Western & Northern Europe, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Alps generally
• Very good: New Zealand, Australia, Canada, US national parks, Andes (Argentina/Chile), Scandinavia
• Good and growing: South America, South Africa, Eastern Europe, South Korea
• Sparse: Some parts of Africa, Central Asia, Pacific islands

Trail metadata (descriptions, length tags, opening hours) is more complete on popular and signposted trails than on local paths.

Cost estimate

This Actor is light on compute — Overpass returns structured JSON in one or a few queries:

• 100 trails (metadata only): ~$0.02 platform usage
• 500 trails (metadata only): ~$0.05 platform usage
• 100 trails (with GPS geometry): ~$0.05 platform usage
• 500 trails (with GPS geometry): ~$0.15 platform usage

Attribution

All data is © OpenStreetMap contributors and provided under the Open Database License (ODbL). When you use this data, you must credit OpenStreetMap. A simple "© OpenStreetMap contributors" notice is enough for most uses. Read more: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.