Why are OSM aerial maps so outdated? Is there a way to update them?

General talk
1

Hi everyone,

I’m a regular user of OpenStreetMap and I truly appreciate the work that has gone into building and maintaining it.

However, I’ve noticed that the aerial imagery used in OSM is sometimes several years out of date. For example, when comparing certain areas with Google Earth’s historical imagery, I found differences of up to 3–4 years. In one specific case, a high-voltage power station built in 2021 is visible in Google Earth, but still not reflected on the aerial map in OSM. In another case, a new building constructed in 2024 does not appear at all.

To clarify, I’m not referring to user-contributed features (like roads, buildings, POIs, etc.), but to the satellite or aerial background imagery itself.

So my questions are:

  1. Why is the imagery used in OSM so outdated in some places?
  2. Is there a specific reason for this delay?
  3. Is there any way for contributors to request or help bring in more recent aerial data?
  4. How does OSM decide which imagery sources to use?

If this question has already been answered elsewhere, I apologize for opening a duplicate thread. Please feel free to link me to the relevant topic or merge this if needed.

Thanks in advance!

2

“Beggars cant be choosers”, meaning that is the best generally available for free. That said, there’s many areas (in the affluent countries) that have government funded aerials made publicly available that are much more up to date, but then If you get to where I’m at, we have here PCN2006 and PCN2012 which is even worse. At any rate. Current imagery is costly.

6 Likes
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GitHub - osmlab/editor-layer-index: A unified layer index for OSM editors. (there are some resources we can use but are not listed in editors)

you can also try to ask government/companies to release aerials on open license or at least on special one allowing specifically OSM mapping (best to consult with others, to avoid case where they agree but release it under rules that block use anyway)

we use what we are allowed to use, for example Google Maps aerial imagery and StreetView cannot be used in our mapping

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Because OSM itself doesn’t host any imagery.
We merely get it from Bing/ESRI/local govts and should be grateful they’re giving it away for free.

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strictly speaking OSMF hosts some imagery, but it was not taken by OSMF

more broadly speaking some people from OSM community host some imagery and taken some very limited amount of it via drones and custom-ordered satellite imagery (but both on small scale). There was also some work to compile and publish aerial imagery taken by others.