Drive-time map: how far can you get in 10, 20 or 30 minutes?
A circle on a map tells you how far a place is as the crow flies; a drive-time map tells you how far you can actually travel along roads in a given time. The shape it draws is called an isochrone — a line joining every point you can reach in the same number of minutes. This free isochrone map generator draws up to four of them at once, by car, by bike or on foot, from any address or point.
Use it to find homes within a 30-minute commute, a delivery or service area, the catchment of a shop or clinic, or how far a 15-minute walk really goes. You can also limit by travel distance instead of time, list places to see which fall inside, and download the result as a PNG, KML for Google Earth or GeoJSON for GIS tools. The areas come from Valhalla, an open-source routing engine, running on OpenStreetMap road data.
How to use the Drive-Time Map (Isochrone)
- Search for an address or place, use My location, or type the latitude and longitude.
- Choose car, bike or walk, then travel time or distance, and enter up to four values such as “10, 20, 30”.
- Press Show reachable area. The coloured zones appear on the preview.
- Press Show on OpenStreetMap for the street map; click it to move the start and press the button again.
- List places as “name; lat, lon” to see which are reached, and download PNG, KML or GeoJSON.
Drive-Time Map (Isochrone) features
Real road networks
Areas follow roads, one-way streets, paths and ferries in OpenStreetMap, not straight lines.
Car, bike or on foot
Each mode uses its own speeds and the ways it is allowed to use.
Time or distance
Up to four contours per request, up to 60 minutes or 100 km on the public server.
Area and reach
Area of each zone, the farthest point reached and the radius of a circle with the same area.
Exports
PNG of the map, KML and GeoJSON with the polygons.
How the reachable area is worked out
The start point is sent to the isochrone service of Valhalla. It explores the road graph outwards from the start, adding up the time (or distance) for each road segment from its type, speed limit and the mode’s typical speed, and draws the boundary where the budget runs out. Speeds are typical free-flow speeds: there is no live or historical traffic, so at rush hour a 30-minute drive may cover much less. Small gaps are smoothed and edges simplified to about 50 m.
This page computes the area of each zone on the sphere, the straight-line distance to its farthest point, and the radius of a circle with the same area, which is a handy way to compare a drive-time map with a simple radius. A 30-minute drive in a dense city often covers less than a 10 km circle; on motorways it can reach 40 km or more.
Free public server and fair use
The routing runs on a free server that FOSSGIS e.V. offers to the OpenStreetMap community. Its terms allow at most one request per second, so this page sends a request only when you press the button, waits at least a second between requests, remembers answers for the session and shows the attribution. The server also limits each request to 60 minutes, 100 km and four contours. For heavy or commercial use, run your own Valhalla server and enter its address under Routing server. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.
For a plain distance circle, use the map radius tool; to turn addresses into coordinates, the address to lat long converter; to plan a route with several stops, the multi-stop route planner.
Drive-Time Map (Isochrone) FAQ
What is an isochrone map?
A map of the area you can reach from one point within a set travel time (or distance). Its edge joins all points that are equally far away in time.
How do I make a drive-time map?
Enter a start, choose car and type the minutes, for example 15, 30 and 45, then press Show reachable area.
Does it include traffic?
No. It uses typical free-flow road speeds from OpenStreetMap, so allow extra time at busy hours.
How is this different from a radius map?
A radius is a straight-line distance in every direction. A drive-time map follows the road network, so it stretches along fast roads and shrinks where there are rivers, hills or no roads.
Is this isochrone map free?
Yes. It uses a free public server under a fair-use policy, so requests are limited to one per second.
Can I use the result in Google Earth or QGIS?
Yes — download KML for Google Earth or GeoJSON for QGIS and most mapping tools.