Place Output

The /reverse, /search and /lookup API calls produce very similar output which is explained in this section. There is one section for each format. The format correspond to what was selected via the format parameter.

JSON

The JSON format returns an array of places (for search and lookup) or a single place (for reverse) of the following format:

  {
    "place_id": "100149",
    "licence": "Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. https://osm.org/copyright",
    "osm_type": "node",
    "osm_id": "107775",
    "boundingbox": ["51.3473219", "51.6673219", "-0.2876474", "0.0323526"],
    "lat": "51.5073219",
    "lon": "-0.1276474",
    "display_name": "London, Greater London, England, SW1A 2DU, United Kingdom",
    "class": "place",
    "type": "city",
    "importance": 0.9654895765402,
    "icon": "https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/images/mapicons/poi_place_city.p.20.png",
    "address": {
      "city": "London",
      "state_district": "Greater London",
      "state": "England",
      "postcode": "SW1A 2DU",
      "country": "United Kingdom",
      "country_code": "gb"
    },
    "extratags": {
      "capital": "yes",
      "website": "http://www.london.gov.uk",
      "wikidata": "Q84",
      "wikipedia": "en:London",
      "population": "8416535"
    }
  }

The possible fields are:

place_id - reference to the Nominatim internal database ID (see notes)
osm_type, osm_id - reference to the OSM object (see notes)
boundingbox - area of corner coordinates (see notes)
lat, lon - latitude and longitude of the centroid of the object
display_name - full comma-separated address
class, type - key and value of the main OSM tag
importance - computed importance rank
icon - link to class icon (if available)
address - dictionary of address details (only with addressdetails=1, see notes)
extratags - dictionary with additional useful tags like website or maxspeed (only with extratags=1)
namedetails - dictionary with full list of available names including ref etc.
geojson, svg, geotext, geokml - full geometry (only with the appropriate polygon_* parameter)

JSONv2

This is the same as the JSON format with two changes:

class renamed to category
additional field place_rank with the search rank of the object

GeoJSON

This format follows the RFC7946. Every feature includes a bounding box (bbox).

The properties object has the following fields:

place_id - reference to the Nominatim internal database ID (see notes)
osm_type, osm_id - reference to the OSM object (see notes)
category, type - key and value of the main OSM tag
display_name - full comma-separated address
place_rank - class search rank
importance - computed importance rank
icon - link to class icon (if available)
address - dictionary of address details (only with addressdetails=1, see notes)
extratags - dictionary with additional useful tags like website or maxspeed (only with extratags=1)
namedetails - dictionary with full list of available names including ref etc.

Use polygon_geojson to output the full geometry of the object instead of the centroid.

GeocodeJSON

The GeocodeJSON format follows the GeocodeJSON spec 0.1.0. The following feature attributes are implemented:

osm_type, osm_id - reference to the OSM object (unofficial extension, see notes)
type - value of the main tag of the object (e.g. residential, restaurant, ...)
label - full comma-separated address
name - localised name of the place
housenumber, street, locality, district, postcode, city, county, state, country - provided when it can be determined from the address
admin - list of localised names of administrative boundaries (only with addressdetails=1)

Use polygon_geojson to output the full geometry of the object instead of the centroid.

XML

The XML response returns one or more place objects in slightly different formats depending on the API call.

Reverse

<reversegeocode timestamp="Sat, 11 Aug 18 11:53:21 +0000"
                attribution="Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright"
                querystring="lat=48.400381&lon=11.745876&zoom=5&format=xml">
  <result place_id="179509537" osm_type="relation" osm_id="2145268" ref="BY" place_rank="15" address_rank="15"
          lat="48.9467562" lon="11.4038717"
          boundingbox="47.2701114,50.5647142,8.9763497,13.8396373">
       Bavaria, Germany
  </result>
  <addressparts>
     <state>Bavaria</state>
     <country>Germany</country>
     <country_code>de</country_code>
  </addressparts>
  <extratags>
    <tag key="place" value="state"/>
    <tag key="wikidata" value="Q980"/>
    <tag key="wikipedia" value="de:Bayern"/>
    <tag key="population" value="12520000"/>
    <tag key="name:prefix" value="Freistaat"/>
  </extratags>
</reversegeocode>

The attributes of the outer reversegeocode element return generic information about the query, including the time when the response was sent (in UTC), attribution to OSM and the original querystring.

The place information can be found in the result element. The attributes of that element contain:

place_id - reference to the Nominatim internal database ID (see notes)
osm_type, osm_id - reference to the OSM object (see notes)
ref - content of ref tag if it exists
lat, lon - latitude and longitude of the centroid of the object
boundingbox - comma-separated list of corner coordinates (see notes)

The full address of the result can be found in the content of the result element as a comma-separated list.

Additional information requested with addressdetails=1, extratags=1 and namedetails=1 can be found in extra elements.

Search and Lookup

<searchresults timestamp="Sat, 11 Aug 18 11:55:35 +0000"
               attribution="Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright"
               querystring="london" polygon="false" exclude_place_ids="100149"
               more_url="https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=london&addressdetails=1&extratags=1&exclude_place_ids=100149&format=xml&accept-language=en-US%2Cen%3Bq%3D0.7%2Cde%3Bq%3D0.3">
  <place place_id="100149" osm_type="node" osm_id="107775" place_rank="15" address_rank="15"
         boundingbox="51.3473219,51.6673219,-0.2876474,0.0323526" lat="51.5073219" lon="-0.1276474"
         display_name="London, Greater London, England, SW1A 2DU, United Kingdom"
         class="place" type="city" importance="0.9654895765402"
         icon="https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/images/mapicons/poi_place_city.p.20.png">
    <extratags>
      <tag key="capital" value="yes"/>
      <tag key="website" value="http://www.london.gov.uk"/>
      <tag key="wikidata" value="Q84"/>
      <tag key="wikipedia" value="en:London"/>
      <tag key="population" value="8416535"/>
    </extratags>
    <city>London</city>
    <state_district>Greater London</state_district>
    <state>England</state>
    <postcode>SW1A 2DU</postcode>
    <country>United Kingdom</country>
    <country_code>gb</country_code>
  </place>
</searchresults>

The attributes of the outer searchresults or lookupresults element return generic information about the query:

timestamp - UTC time when the response was sent
attribution - OSM licensing information
querystring - original query
polygon - true when extra geometry information was requested
exclude_place_ids - IDs of places that should be ignored in a follow-up request
more_url - search call that will yield additional results for the query just sent

The place information can be found in the place elements, of which there may be more than one. The attributes of that element contain:

place_id - reference to the Nominatim internal database ID (see notes)
osm_type, osm_id - reference to the OSM object (see notes)
ref - content of ref tag if it exists
lat, lon - latitude and longitude of the centroid of the object
boundingbox - comma-separated list of corner coordinates (see notes)
place_rank - class search rank
address_rank - place address rank
display_name - full comma-separated address
class, type - key and value of the main OSM tag
importance - computed importance rank
icon - link to class icon (if available)

When addressdetails=1 is requested, the localised address parts appear as subelements with the type of the address part.

Additional information requested with extratags=1 and namedetails=1 can be found in extra elements as sub-element of extratags and namedetails respectively.

Notes on field values

place_id is not a persistent id

The place_id is an internal identifier that is assigned data is imported into a Nominatim database. The same OSM object will have a different value on another server. It may even change its ID on the same server when it is removed and reimported while updating the database with fresh OSM data. It is thus not useful to treat it as permanent for later use.

The combination osm_type+osm_id is slighly better but remember in OpenStreetMap mappers can delete, split, recreate places (and those get a new osm_id), there is no link between those old and new ids. Places can also change their meaning without changing their osm_id, e.g. when a restaurant is retagged as supermarket. For a more in-depth discussion see Permanent ID.

If you need an ID that is consistent over multiple installations of Nominatim, then you should use the combination of osm_type+osm_id+class.

OSM reference

Nominatim may sometimes return special objects that do not correspond directly to an object in OpenStreetMap. These are:

Postcodes. Nominatim returns an postcode point created from all mapped postcodes of the same name. The class and type of these object is place=postcdode. No osm_type and osm_id are included in the result.
Housenumber interpolations. Nominatim returns a single interpolated housenumber from the interpolation way. The class and type are place=house and osm_type and osm_id correspond to the interpolation way in OSM.
TIGER housenumber. Nominatim returns a single interpolated housenumber from the TIGER data. The class and type are place=house and osm_type and osm_id correspond to the street mentioned in the result.

Please note that the osm_type and osm_id returned may be changed in the future. You should not expect to only find node, way and relation for the type.

boundingbox

Comma separated list of min latitude, max latitude, min longitude, max longitude. The whole planet would be -90,90,-180,180.

Can be used to pan and center the map on the result, for example with leafletjs mapping library map.fitBounds([[bbox[0],bbox[2]],[bbox[1],bbox[3]]], {padding: [20, 20], maxzoom: 16});

Bounds crossing the antimeridian have a min latitude -180 and max latitude 180, essentially covering the entire planet (see issue 184).

addressdetails

Address details in the xml and json formats return a list of names together with a designation label. Per default the following labels may appear:

continent
country, country_code
region, state, state_district, county
municipality, city, town, village
city_district, district, borough, suburb, subdivision
hamlet, croft, isolated_dwelling
neighbourhood, allotments, quarter
city_block, residental, farm, farmyard, industrial, commercial, retail
road
house_number, house_name
emergency, historic, military, natural, landuse, place, railway, man_made, aerialway, boundary, amenity, aeroway, club, craft, leisure, office, mountain_pass, shop, tourism, bridge, tunnel, waterway

They roughly correspond to the classification of the OpenStreetMap data according to either the place tag or the main key of the object.