What is the Outdoor map?
The Streets basemap with terrain on top: shaded relief that shows the shape of the land, contour lines with their heights, and optional 3D so the camera can tilt into a valley. Same roads, water, places and labels as Streets, so nothing you built on Streets changes.
What is it for?
Cycling and hiking apps, route planners that want the climb visible before the ride, trail and park websites, outdoor gear brands, ski and mountain-bike resorts, and any product where the ground matters more than the street grid.
How is it priced?
Like every style: one unit per map session. Terrain rides in the same session as the basemap, so relief, contours and 3D add nothing. Ten thousand sessions a month are free; paid plans start at five euros.
Where do the contour lines come from?
They are computed in the visitor's browser from the same elevation tiles that shade the relief, rather than pre-drawn as a tileset. That is why they stay sharp at any zoom, carry height labels, and drape correctly over 3D terrain. It also means they need a browser with WebGL, like the rest of the map.
How detailed is the terrain?
Worldwide elevation on a grid of about 30 metres. Mountains, valleys, ridges and rolling hills read clearly; a single embankment or a cutting narrower than the grid is smoothed. Finer national elevation data, down to a metre in some countries, is planned but not in yet.
Can I get the heights as numbers too?
Yes. The Elevation API samples the same terrain for points or along a route, so a profile chart under the map matches the relief on it. That is a separate request and costs one unit per call.
Where is it weakest?
Outdoor is relief and contours on the street basemap, not a full topographic map yet. There are no ski pistes, lifts, or hiking and cycling route networks drawn as layers, and no surface colouring for paths. Those are on the list, but do not buy this page expecting them today.
Do I have to use your SDK?
No. The SDK sets the style and 3D with one option and one call. With your own MapLibre you add the terrain source, the hillshade layer and the contour generator yourself; the docs carry the exact setup, and it is a few dozen lines.
Is there a free tier?
Yes. The free plan includes 10,000 units a month with no card and no sales call, which is 10,000 map sessions if that is all you spend them on. It is a hard cap, so a traffic spike cannot produce a bill.
Where are my visitors' requests served from?
Tiles, terrain included, come from a European CDN and the session is issued from the European Union, end to end. No part of the path touches a US-controlled provider. We publish a DPA and a full sub-processor list.