Mapy.com is a widely used mapping application with a strong focus on hiking and cycling, used daily by millions of people.

It is built largely on OpenStreetMap — but using OSM in a real product at this scale quickly shows that the data is not always complete, consistent, or ready to use as-is.

In this talk, I will share what we have learned while running Mapy.com in production. Not an introduction to the product, but practical experience: what works well, what causes problems, and what we had to change or interpret to make the data usable for everyday outdoor navigation.

A key part is understanding what a good outdoor map actually needs. For us, that means things like a complete network of marked hiking and cycling routes, usable terrain information, and details that help people orient themselves in real conditions. When parts of this are missing or inconsistent, the result can be routes that look fine on the map but don’t work well in reality. In practice, the biggest challenge is often not incorrect data, but missing connections and incomplete route networks, combined with strong regional differences in data quality.

We see this in practice — situations where navigation leads people into terrain they are not prepared for are not rare, and they show how important data quality really is.

We will also look at attributes like surface and difficulty, access restrictions, and seasonal limitations, which are often critical for deciding whether a route is actually suitable. I will also touch on overtourism and how maps can better reflect real-world constraints instead of just showing everything that exists.

Finally, I will share how this experience feeds back into OpenStreetMap — what we contribute, where we still see gaps, and where better cooperation between companies and the community could help.

This talk is for anyone interested in how OpenStreetMap is actually used in practice, especially beyond the “it works on the map” level.