What Are Your Favorite Online Maps?
Tue, 04/14/2026 - 10:32am
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    19 years
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As posted above, what are your favorite online maps? For many of us, I suspect it will be Google Maps. There are other choices, too. Lately, I have been using:
Google Maps
Open Street Maps
HERE WeGo
Mapcarta
Wikipedia gives a nice breakdown and comparison of a number of web map services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_map_services
If anybody has a website to compare these four to another, that would be great. I know there are map comparison websites. I would like to see one that uses the above maps.
That's easy...
boydsmaps.com, of course!
Seriously, I don't offer routable maps if that's what you want. But I cover the Northeast US with a wide variety of maps, such as
The oldest available 19th century USGS topo maps
USGS legacy 24k topo maps (these are scans of the classic paper maps)
USGS DRG 24k topo maps (their first digital scans of the paper maps, from 30 years ago)
2023 USGS digital topo maps
OpenTopoMap (from OpenStreetMap)
Aerial imagery from (circa) 1985, 1995, 2006, 2013, 2019, 2023 and 2025
High resolution 3d LIDAR terrain
Map availability varies depending on your exact location, but all of the above are available for much of the Northeast. Some areas have much more. These are all locally stored on my server, about 3tb total which should grow to 4tb during the coming year. But you can also access all of the current USGS products directly from their servers with coverage of the whole US, including topo maps, aerials and LIDAR terrain.
It's all free, there are no ads, no registration, I'm not selling anything, I'm not affiliated with any company/organization and I don't even accept donations. That's something those other sources can't claim.
boydsmaps.com
I used to use Microsoft
I used to use Microsoft Streets and Trips exclusively, until it was no longer made. I've used Google Maps ever since. I like to stick with one so I don't have to learn several ways of operating stuff.
. 2 Garmin DriveSmart 61 LMT-S, Nuvi 2689, 2 Nuvi 2460, Uniden R3 radar detector with GPS built in, includes RLC info. Uconnect 430N Garmin based, built into my Jeep. .