How it works · editorial process
Every pin, checked by hand.
You want to know two things: where can I stop tonight, and will someone knock on the window at 2am. This page explains how we answer that, and how much to trust the answer.
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01
Sourced from official data
OpenStreetMap tags, France's DATAtourisme feed, the US Recreation Information Database, Bureau of Land Management points, or a commune's own page. Everything starts from a public source with a URL and a licence.
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Checked for designation
A record tagged free is a candidate, not a place. It is published only once someone has confirmed a named body designated it. That single filter removes most of the ghost aires.
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Amenities filled in cautiously
If the notice does not confirm a toilet block, the field stays unverified. It does not become a no. Absent tags and confirmed absences are stored and rendered as different things.
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Written in plain English
Local words for local things: aire, Stellplatz, sosta, mairie, Gemeinde. Used, then explained. The source stays linked, in its own language, so you can read it yourself.
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Dated
Every place and every rules page carries the date a person last opened its source and confirmed it. That date is a required field on the schema, so a record cannot ship without one.
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Layers kept separate
Records are never deduplicated across sources. That is an ODbL share-alike requirement as much as a data-quality one, and it is why each place carries its own source rather than a merged blob.
01 · The line
What gets a pin, and what does not.
Free is the bar for inclusion. Where a place is free to park but charges for water or electricity, we say so rather than quietly dropping it.
A place appears on the map only if a named body has designated it as somewhere you may stop: a commune that created an aire, a town that signed a Stellplatz, a comune that authorized a sosta, a US agency that publishes a dispersed camping area.
Wild camping never gets a pin. It gets a rules page instead: what the law or access code actually permits, where it applies, and what conditions attach. There is a practical reason on top of the legal one. Coordinates for informal spots are how those spots fill up, then get complaints, then get a barrier.
For rules content the source is the body that makes the rule: a national access code, a forest or park authority, a regional decree, a commune byelaw. We read it in its own language, write down what it says in plain English, link to it, and date it. Where our summary and the original disagree, the original wins.
02 · Last verified
A date, not a promise.
A last-verified date means a person opened that source on that date and confirmed it still said what we claim it says. That is all it means. It is not a promise the rule is still true today: an authority can change a policy the day after we check, and confirming that a URL resolves is not confirming a rule.
Treat an old date as a reason to open the source yourself. Treat a recent date as a reason to be a little more confident, and then open the source anyway if you are driving a long way for it.
03 · Blanks
A blank means nobody checked.
This is the single thing readers most often get wrong about the site, so it is worth the space.
If a record does not say whether there is drinking water, that means nobody has recorded it, not that the tap is absent. The two look identical if you flatten them, so we do not flatten them. Every amenity on every place is one of exactly three states, and each one has its own look:
- Drinking water
Verified. The official notice or a source data field confirms it exists.
- Showers
Not present. The notice explicitly says there are none.
- Toilets
Unverified. Nobody has checked yet, and it is never shown as a no.
We could fill every gap by inferring from the next town over, or from what a rule probably says. We do not, because a plausible guess is worse than an honest gap. A guess reads exactly like a fact, and you cannot tell which one got you the fine. Null beats wrong.
04 · In practice
How to actually use it.
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Start with the country.
The system is national before it is local. Knowing what an aire is, and that it is not the same thing as a Stellplatz, saves you more time than any single listing.
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Narrow to the region, then the place.
Read the amenities and the access notes. Height barriers and seasonal gates are the two things that turn a good plan into a three-point turn in the dark.
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Read the rule and the date.
If the date is old or the stakes are high, open the source link.
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Call the mairie, Gemeinde, comune or district office if it is close.
The number is on the source page. They know about the closure that has not made it online yet.
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Believe the sign.
When you arrive, the posted sign is the authority. If it contradicts us, it wins. Then email us so we can fix the page.
What we get wrong.
Rules go stale. Communes withdraw aires quietly. Amenity data ages badly, because a tap that worked in 2023 is not a tap that works now. We miss things. Everything here is bylined to the FreeCampMaps Team, and nothing is a field report unless someone actually went. If you find something wrong, send the page and the source that proves it. That is the fastest way this site gets better.