How to download tiles?

Direct download

All tilesets are published at download.versatiles.org. Every entry there has a Download button that builds the command for you: pick the whole planet or a bounding box, the container format (.versatiles, .pmtiles, .mbtiles or .tar), a zoom range, and whether to run the versatiles binary or Docker. Copy the generated command and run it.

The sections below explain the same commands, for when you would rather write them yourself.

To download a whole file directly, use wget. The -c flag resumes an interrupted download:

wget -c "https://download.versatiles.org/osm.versatiles"

Each file has .md5 and .sha256 companions to verify the download:

curl -O "https://download.versatiles.org/osm.versatiles.md5"
md5sum -c osm.versatiles.md5

Older versions and update notifications

osm.versatiles always points at the newest build. Previous builds stay available under a dated name — osm.20260608.versatiles and so on — listed behind Show all versions. Pin one of those if you need a reproducible dataset.

Each tileset also publishes an RSS feed (for example feed-osm.xml) announcing new builds, and a urllist_<tileset>.tsv for scripted or bulk transfers.

Partial download

If you only need tiles for a specific region, like a continent or a country, you can use VersaTiles to download them. Filters can be applied to specify minimum and maximum zoom levels, as well as a geographical bounding box.

For example, to download only tiles for Switzerland (including 3 tiles as border):

versatiles convert --bbox-border 3 --bbox "5.956,45.818,10.492,47.808" https://download.versatiles.org/osm.versatiles switzerland.versatiles

Or, very similarly, how to download Germany

versatiles convert --bbox-border 3 --bbox "5.988,47.302,15.017,54.983" https://download.versatiles.org/osm.versatiles germany.versatiles

You can also limit the zoom levels:

versatiles convert --bbox-border 3 --bbox "5.988,47.302,15.017,54.983" --min-zoom 10 --max-zoom 14 https://download.versatiles.org/osm.versatiles germany.versatiles

Downloading to Google Cloud Storage

To store VersaTiles data on Google Cloud Storage, follow these steps:

• Prepare a Google Cloud Storage Bucket Follow the Google documentation to create a new bucket.

• Copy the Latest Data Transfer "osm.versatiles" file from download.versatiles.org to your bucket. There are 3 ways to do that:

  1. Automated Transfer
  • Navigate to "Bucket details" and click on "TRANSFER DATA", then "Transfer data in".
  • Select "Source type: URL list" and proceed to the next step.
  • Enter "https://download.versatiles.org/urllist_osm.tsv" as the "URL of TSV file" and proceed.
  • Specify your bucket and folder as the destination, and continue.
  • Opt for "Run once", "Starting now", and finalize by clicking "CREATE".
  • Monitor the transfer status here.
  • Note: Transfer speed may be limited to around 10 MB/s for unspecified reasons.
  2. Manual Transfer
  • Use wget or curl to download the file and gcloud storage cp to upload it, if you have a high-speed internet connection.
  3. Google VM Transfer
  • Alternatively, use a Google Compute Engine VM for both downloading and uploading.

• Set Public Access The bucket or the file must be set to public access.

  Why Public Access is Required

  The Rust server reads containers over HTTP, HTTPS and SFTP only — it has no Google Cloud authentication, so it can only reach a bucket object that is publicly readable over HTTPS. If you would rather keep the bucket private, use @versatiles/google-cloud instead: that Node.js server takes the bucket name as an argument and reads it with the service account's own credentials, so nothing has to be public.