POI Nearby Search Now Available in OnCoord

April 2026

Map showing points of interest near a location in a Latin American city

OnCoord now supports targeted nearby search. With the POI Nearby API, developers can find specific types of places within a given radius of any coordinate — returning names, distances, coordinates, and address data for each result. Whether the use case is finding the nearest hospital, locating all bus stops within walking distance, or identifying competitor locations in a trade area, a single API call returns the answer.

Find What You're Looking For

POI Nearby is built around intent. You specify the type of place you need — a hospital, a bus stop, a pizza restaurant — and the API returns the actual venues: named, located, and sorted by distance from your queried coordinate.

Category and Radius, One Call

Each request takes a coordinate, a category, and a search radius. The response returns a total count and a ranked list of matching venues:

{
  "total": 4,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "openstreetmap:venue:node/8663618918",
      "name": "Vips",
      "category": [
        "food",
        "retail",
        "nightlife",
        "amenity:restaurant",
        "cuisine:mexican"
      ],
      "distance_m": 179,
      "center_point": {
        "lon": -99.134723,
        "lat": 19.43188
      },
      "address": {
        "number": "81",
        "zip": "06000",
        "street": "16 de Septiembre"
      },
      "addendum": {
        "osm": "{\"wheelchair\":\"yes\",\"brand\":\"Vips\",\"opening_hours\":\"Mo-Su 08:00-20:00\"}"
      }
    },
   ...
  ]
}

total — the number of matching venues found within the search radius.

name — the venue name. Where multiple names are recorded, all are returned.

category — all tags assigned to the venue. The queried category will always be present; additional tags give broader context. For example, a post office may also carry government or retail and transport depending on how it is recorded.

distance_m — straight-line distance in metres from the queried point to the venue, used to order results closest-first.

center_point — the coordinates of the venue.

address — partial address data where available, including street name, number, and postal code. Coverage varies by country and data quality.

Flexible Category Search

Categories use OpenStreetMap tags in key:value format. Broad categories such as food, retail, and transport return wide sets of results. Specific tags such as amenity:post_office, amenity:hospital, cuisine:pizza, or highway:bus_stop narrow results to a precise venue type. The radius parameter accepts values from under a kilometre up to 10 km, making the endpoint equally suited to walking-distance queries and broader trade area analysis.

POI Nearby is available across OnCoord's full coverage area: Mexico, Central America, and South America. See our Countries page for a full list of supported countries.

Together with POI Density, geocoding, population, terrain, and activity data, POI Nearby gives developers a complete toolkit for understanding any location — not just where it is, but what surrounds it.