Where the information comes from
Radar gathers what it shows from many trusted sources at once, and merges them so the same petrol station or pharmacy never appears twice. It picks the right sources for wherever you are searching, so there is nothing to configure. You can see the live list, with the licence and attribution for each, on the Data sources page in the app.
Every source, in full
Radar draws on close to thirty sources. Some work wherever you are, and the rest belong to one country. Everything below is free apart from Google Places, which is the single Premium source.
The ones that work everywhere
These are behind every search, whichever country you are in.
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap | The backbone. Nearly every category, from campsites to postboxes, mapped by people on the ground. | Held in our own copy and refreshed monthly for the countries listed below, fetched live everywhere else |
| The Radar community | Places, tips and reports from travellers and owners: stopovers, border crossings, dump stations, private hosts, road reports and more. See The community map. | Live, once a moderator has approved it |
| Open Charge Map | EV charge points, with connector types, networks and power ratings. | Live |
| OpenStreetMap vehicle restrictions | Height, width, weight and length limits on smaller roads, surveyed by contributors. It fills in where official road data stops. Great Britain and the island of Ireland so far. | Monthly |
| OpenStreetMap toll gates | Toll barriers and free-flow toll gantries, in every country whose map data we hold. Includes the M6 Toll and Britain's tolled bridges as well as the French autoroutes. See Toll gates. | Monthly |
| NASA FIRMS | Active fire detections from satellites. See Active fires. | Hourly |
| what3words | Turns a three word address into the three metre square it names, so you can search for one the way you would a postcode. See Searching by what3words. | Live |
| Google Places (Premium) | Fills gaps where the open data is thin. | Live |
Open Charge Map now really is worldwide. It always covered the world, but Radar was still asking it for Great Britain alone, left over from Radar's British days, so a charger search anywhere else came back empty. See EV chargers work everywhere now.
Great Britain and the UK
The deepest stack, because British public bodies publish the most.
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| UK Government Fuel Finder | Pump prices at filling stations, which retailers must report by law. | Every 30 minutes |
| GB Toilet Map | 15,800 and more public toilets, with accessibility, baby change and RADAR key details. | Live |
| NHS ODS | Every registered pharmacy, dentist and NHS hospital site. | Daily |
| FSA food hygiene ratings | The official rating for restaurants, cafes, pubs and shops, in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. | Live |
| DVSA MOT stations | Every active MOT test centre in Great Britain, and the vehicle classes each one tests. | Quarterly |
| Open Banking ATMs | Over 6,000 cash machines from 13 UK banks. | Daily |
| Wash.ME / Revolution | Over 1,200 self-service launderettes across the UK and Ireland. | Daily |
| FillLPG | Around 1,800 LPG and Autogas stations, which the open map alone does not cover well enough in Britain. | Occasionally, by hand |
| OS Open Greenspace | Ordnance Survey's parks, playing fields, allotments and play areas across Great Britain. | The dataset is published twice a year |
| Arts Council England library data | Around 3,300 public libraries. England only. | Yearly |
| Libraries NI | All 98 static libraries in Northern Ireland, with their address and phone number. Northern Ireland only. | Yearly |
| Environment Agency bathing waters | Around 450 designated swimming spots with their annual classification, coastal and inland. England only. | Monthly |
| Environment Agency flood warnings | Live flood alerts and warnings, drawn as shaded areas. England only. | Every 15 minutes |
| National Highways | Low bridges and weight, width and length limits on England's major roads. | Monthly |
| Forestry and Land Scotland Stay the Night | Around 43 forestry car parks where self-contained motorhomes may stay overnight, paid through RingGo. Scotland only. | Monthly |
| GLA and TfL zone boundaries | London's Ultra Low Emission Zone, Low Emission Zone and Congestion Charge, drawn on the map. See London: the ULEZ, the LEZ and the Congestion Charge. London only. | Weekly, and the charges are checked by hand |
| West of England Combined Authority | The Bath and Bristol Clean Air Zones, with what each class of vehicle must meet and what it costs. See Bath and Bristol: the Clean Air Zones. Those two cities only. | Weekly, and the charges are checked by hand |
| Improvement Service Spatial Hub | Scotland's four Low Emission Zones, in the centres of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. These are a ban rather than a charge: you cannot pay to enter. See Scotland: the four Low Emission Zones. Those four cities only. | Boundaries checked every few months, rules checked by hand |
| NatureScot | Scotland's National Nature Reserves, Local Nature Reserves, Country Parks, Regional Parks and Nature Reserves, shaded on the map. Around 945 shapes. See Nature areas. Scotland only. | Weekly |
| NATS UAS Flight Restrictions | Every aerodrome's drone flight restriction zone and runway protection zones, the danger areas and the prohibited areas from the UK AIP, drawn on the map. Used with NATS's permission. See Drone zones. | Every AIRAC cycle (28 days) |
| NATS NOTAMs | The live temporary restrictions that matter to a drone: temporary restricted areas, danger area activations, air displays, parachuting and unmanned aircraft activity. See Drone zones. | Hourly |
Several of these are narrower than "the UK", as the table says: some are Great Britain, some England or Scotland alone.
Northern Ireland has more than it used to. Alongside the places and the food hygiene ratings, it is covered by the fuel prices, the toilet map, the cash machines, the LPG stations, the launderettes, the road hazards, and now its own library data. What it still does not have is the NHS pharmacy and dentist directory, the MOT centres, the greenspace, the bathing waters, the flood warnings and the road restrictions, because the bodies that publish those cover Great Britain or England rather than the whole UK. We are working through the Northern Irish equivalents one at a time.
France
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| Prix Carburants | Pump prices at around 9,800 filling stations, which every station must report by law. It includes GPL, so in France one source covers Autogas as well as petrol and diesel, priced in euro cents. | Every 30 minutes |
| DATAtourisme | Around 3,340 aires de camping-car published by local tourist offices, most with the season they open, a price, and whether there is a service point. Many also carry a phone number or a website. | Weekly |
| Base Nationale ZFE | The national register of Crit'Air clean air zones, with the minimum sticker each class of vehicle needs. See France: Crit'Air zones. | Daily |
| Bison Futé | Roadworks, closures, accidents and obstructions on the national road network, published live by the regional road authorities. Toll motorways are not included: see Roadworks and road events. | Every 30 minutes |
Spain
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| Precio Carburantes | Pump prices at around 11,400 filling stations, reported by every station to the energy ministry. Like France it includes GLP, so one source covers Autogas as well as petrol and diesel, priced in euro cents. | Every 30 minutes |
| AEMET | Active severe weather warnings from Spain's national met agency, shaded over the areas they cover, in English. See Weather warnings. | Every 30 minutes |
Spanish stations list the grades by the names on the pump, so you see Gasóleo A, Gasolina 95 and 98 (E5 and E10) and GLP. Agricultural diesel (Gasóleo B) is deliberately left out: it is in the feed, it is cheaper, and it is not legal in a road vehicle, so showing it would be misleading.
Belgium
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| AFSCA/FAVV Smiley list | Belgian food businesses certified as running a checked hygiene system, the "Smiley" sticker you see in the window. | Weekly |
This is not the same thing as the UK's food-hygiene ratings. Belgium publishes no graded scores at all, only the list of businesses that hold the certificate, so a Smiley is a good sign and its absence tells you nothing either way.
Switzerland
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| Swiss Federal Office for the Environment | The federal protected areas: game reserves, water and migratory bird reserves, mire landscapes, and the parks of national importance, shaded on the map. See Nature areas. | Weekly |
| BAZL geographical UAS zones | Where a drone needs permission to fly: nature reserves, sensitive sites and every aerodrome, 1,222 zones. See Drone zones. | Daily |
This is Switzerland's first source of its own, and it is national, which is unusual for Swiss data: nearly everything else there is published canton by canton, twenty-six times over. Overnight parking is one of those cantonal matters and there is no national list of it, which is exactly why these areas are worth showing. Staying the night inside one is broadly not tolerated anywhere in the country.
The Netherlands
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| NDW | Roadworks, closures and road-affecting events for the whole country, from every council, province and Rijkswaterstaat district merged into one national feed. See Roadworks and road events. | Every 6 hours |
There is no Dutch pump price source. Nobody publishes prices station by station in the way France, Spain and the UK require, so you will find the filling stations but not what they are charging.
Luxembourg
| Source | What it gives you | How current it is |
|---|---|---|
| Direction de l'Aviation Civile geographical UAS zones | The 47 zones where a drone may not fly, or needs permission, including the sensitive sites and heliports. See Drone zones. | Daily |
Everywhere else
No national sources yet. Portugal, Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Andorra and Luxembourg have the full local map and everything travellers have added, and each country's own sources are built in one at a time. "No national source" does not mean nothing is there: the open map covers most categories everywhere, and a national source is what makes a category complete and current rather than best effort.
The Data sources page in the app
The Data sources page in the app lists every source with its licence, cost, and how often it refreshes. Sources are grouped by the part of the world they cover, worldwide ones first, then country by country, so you can tell at a glance which of them apply where you are heading. The page also shows which sources feed each thing on the map, so you can see where a fuel price, a low bridge, or a fire came from, and that now covers the map layers (hazards, roadworks, floods, weather warnings, emission zones, toll gates and nature areas) as well as the search categories.
Each country is a section you can open and close, with the number of sources on it, so the page opens as a short list of countries rather than a wall of cards. Worldwide is open to start with, since it applies wherever you are.
Every country Radar holds the map for now gets a section, including the ones with no source of their own. They used to be missing from the page altogether, which read as "Radar has nothing here" when the truth was the opposite: the local map is loaded and stored, and every worldwide source works there. Those sections now say so.
On a phone, the page is under the More tab. See Getting around Radar.
The page is built from the same live list Radar itself searches, so nothing is left off it, and every source is named properly wherever it appears: on the page and on a result's details.
Radar chooses the sources, so there is nothing to set up. You will not find a list of feeds to tick. Radar knows which ones cover the place you are searching and uses them, so you get French sources in France without needing to know which those are. The page above is there so you can see what Radar draws on and credit the organisations that publish it, which is a condition of most of the licences.
Where in the world
You can search anywhere in the world, free, and you always could. What changes from country to country is how much sits behind that search.
Radar holds a full local copy of the community map for fifteen areas, so a search in any of them comes back as quickly, and in as much detail, as a search at home:
- Great Britain
- Ireland and Northern Ireland
- France
- Belgium
- Luxembourg
- the Netherlands
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Austria
- Andorra
- Spain
- Portugal
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Norway, which takes in Svalbard and Jan Mayen as well
That is western Europe covered end to end, the Alpine passes, and the road north through Denmark into Scandinavia, rather than a patch here and there. Seven of them are new: Switzerland, Austria, Andorra, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
A country's map data is loaded a country at a time and refreshed monthly. A newly added country is copied over for the first time on its own schedule, so if a search somewhere very new comes back thinner than you expected, that is usually what you are seeing rather than an empty country.
Northern Ireland is worth calling out on its own. Great Britain means England, Scotland, and Wales, so Northern Ireland had never been part of the British map data. It has place data of its own, and because the island comes as one piece, the Republic of Ireland arrived with it. Routing is the exception and has not caught up: directions still stop at Great Britain, so a route in Belfast or Dublin is not available yet.
Germany is the largest map Radar has taken on, larger than France, and the whole country is now searched from our own copy.
Some things sit on a narrower footprint than the fifteen:
- The UK has the most behind it: every source on this page. Most of those sources are Great Britain in practice rather than the whole UK, so Northern Ireland has the places but not yet all of the extras.
- Live forecourt prices are the UK, France and Spain. Everywhere else you will still find the filling stations, just not what they are charging today.
- Roadworks and closures are the Netherlands and France, and in France the national roads rather than the toll motorways.
- Emission and charging zones are France, London, Bath and Bristol, and Scotland's four cities.
- Severe weather warnings are Spain, which is the first country to have them.
- Nature areas, the national parks, nature reserves and wildlife rest zones, cover Switzerland and Scotland.
- Drone zones are the UK, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Other countries follow as their aviation authorities confirm the data may be reused.
- Vehicle restrictions, the low bridges and weight limits on the hazard layer, are Great Britain and the island of Ireland. Elsewhere that layer will be empty, and an empty layer means we have not surveyed the roads there, not that they are clear.
Anywhere else in the world, a search still works. You get community-mapped places, whatever travellers have added, and, with Premium, Google Places.
Planning a route is a separate question, and it covers Great Britain only. Places in Germany or Portugal do not mean directions there. See Routing.
Google Places
Google Places is the one Premium source. Radar uses it to fill in the gaps where the free community and public sources are thin. See Accounts & Premium.