Product updates

Changelog

Notable, user-facing changes to OpenMaps — newest first.

2026-06-16

Build routes in chat — ask for directions between two places and OpenMaps draws the route as its own line on the map, with distance and travel time. Pick how you travel (car, bike, or on foot) and, for an off-road trip, ask for a preference for unpaved/dirt roads (e.g. _"a cycling route over dirt roads from Amsterdam to Utrecht"_). The dirt-road preference is a strong bias, not a hard rule — the route still uses paved roads where it has to, and the reply tells you when an all-unpaved route isn't possible.

More free credits to start: every new account now gets **1,000,000** free credits (up from 250,000), and all existing accounts have been topped up to 1,000,000 — enough to comfortably build several maps before topping up.

Map popups now show the "Directions" heading in the map's own language. Previously the routing block on a feature popup was always labelled in Dutch, even on English maps.
Your prompt is no longer lost when you run out of credits mid-build. The map description you’re writing is now saved and restored automatically — even across buying credits — so nothing disappears. Buying credits from a map also brings you straight back to that map, with your text ready to send.
Restored sign-in and the rest of the site after the credits release: a missing database migration meant the new credit-balance column never existed in production, so every page that checked your session failed to load.

Credits — OpenMaps is free to start: every new account gets 250,000 free credits, used as you build maps. When they run low you can top up any time with a one-off purchase (no subscription) on the new **Account → Credits** page, which shows your balance, packs to buy, and recent activity.
"Rail" outline category for the OSM feature layer — map railways, trams and metro/subway lines, not just roads, water, green and buildings.

Building a map now draws from your credit balance. Cheaper, greener models cost far fewer credits per map than the most capable one, so you control the trade-off. If you run out, you’re prompted to top up before the next build.

Homepage social-share preview image now renders (a second layout issue was still breaking it after the previous fix).

Public changelog page at `/changelog` (and `/nl/changelog`), linked from the site footer.
Population density by NUTS-2 region (Eurostat) as a statistics choropleth, so "population density hotspots in Europe" maps directly.
New worldwide statistics indicators: renewable energy share, renewable electricity output, forest/tree cover, and CO₂ emissions per capita.
Author-language popups: data layers fetched during a chat now render their labels in the map author's language instead of always Dutch.

Species maps (GBIF) framed at country or continent scale now cover the whole area instead of collapsing to a small box — a continent-wide wildlife map went from a handful of points to a full sample.
Continent-scale species layers now note that they show a sample of the densest records, and suggest zooming in for a complete local picture.
The worldwide ESA WorldCover land-cover layer is no longer wrongly flagged as Netherlands-only when used across Europe.
Social-share preview image for the homepage now renders correctly.