Developers · Routing API

Routing API for bikes, scooters, motorcycles and wheelchairs.

The routing engine of the « On va où ? » navigation and safety app, for your own products. One request returns up to three variants, safe, balanced and fast, billed as a single request, with what makes a two-wheel route good or bad: cycle lanes, surfaces, main roads, elevation.

Get a free API key Pricing OpenAPI spec

Why this API

Three variants, one request. safe favours cycle lanes and quiet streets (for motorcycles, it avoids motorways), fast minimises travel time, balanced sits in between.
Route quality indicators in every response: cycleway share, unpaved share, main-road share, motorway share, ascent and descent.
A profile per vehicle: bike, e-bike, kick scooter, motorcycle (toll and motorway avoidance), wheelchair (slope, surface and kerb aware), walking.
Ready to display: GeoJSON or encoded polyline, elevation profile, turn-by-turn steps in 7 languages.
Address search included: POST /v1/geocode turns an address or a place name into coordinates, and it is not counted against the monthly quota.
Self-service: account, keys, usage and subscription at console.onvaou.app. Free plan without a credit card.
All of Europe on every plan, free plan included. EU-hosted, OpenStreetMap data.

Quick start

Create an account and a key at console.onvaou.app, then send the key in the x-api-key header. Call the API from your server, never from a web page or a mobile app.

curl -X POST https://api.onvaou.app/v1/routes \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"origin":[2.3522,48.8566],"destination":[2.4392,48.8474],"mode":"bike"}'

Request: `POST /v1/routes`

Field	Type	Description
`origin`, `destination`	[lon, lat]	Required, WGS 84.
`waypoints`	[[lon, lat]]	Up to 8 intermediate points.
`mode`	string	`bike` (default), `ebike`, `scooter` (kick scooter), `moto` (motorcycle), `wheelchair`, `foot`.
`variants`	string[]	Any of `safe`, `balanced`, `fast`. Default: all three.
`avoid`	string[]	`ferries`, `steps`; `tolls`, `highways` (motorcycle); `unpaved`, `steep` (wheelchair).
`elevation`	boolean	Elevation profile, default `true`.
`instructions`	boolean	Turn-by-turn steps, default `true`.
`language`	string	`fr` (default), `en`, `de`, `es`, `it`, `nl`, `pt`.
`geometry`	string	`geojson` (default) or `polyline` (Google algorithm, precision 5).

Response

{
  "mode": "bike",
  "routes": [
    {
      "variants": ["safe", "balanced", "fast"],
      "distanceM": 7159,
      "durationS": 1525,
      "ascentM": 38,
      "descentM": 41,
      "indicators": { "cyclewayShare": 0.773, "unpavedShare": 0, "mainRoadShare": 0.036, "motorwayShare": 0 },
      "geometry": { "type": "LineString", "coordinates": [[2.3522, 48.8566], "..."] },
      "elevationProfile": [[0, 35], [95, 36], "..."],
      "steps": [{ "instruction": "Head east", "name": "Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville", "distanceM": 120, "durationS": 28, "type": 11 }]
    }
  ],
  "usage": { "month": "2026-09", "requests": 1, "quota": 10000, "plan": "decouverte" },
  "attribution": "© On va où ? · © openrouteservice by HeiGIT · © OpenStreetMap contributors"
}

When the engine finds a single sensible route, it is returned once with all the requested labels. Variants are never invented. Display the attribution next to the route you show.

Address search: `POST /v1/geocode`

An address, a place name, a station or a point of interest becomes coordinates, ready to pass as origin, destination or a waypoint of /v1/routes. Up to five candidates, best first; when nothing matches, the answer is a 200 with an empty results array.

curl -X POST https://api.onvaou.app/v1/geocode \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"10 rue de Rivoli, Paris","country":"FR","limit":3}'

Field	Type	Description
`query`	string	Required, from 2 to 200 characters.
`near`	{lon, lat}	Proximity bias; it does not restrict the search. The point must be inside the European coverage, otherwise `422 out_of_coverage`.
`country`	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, uppercase (FR, BE, DE…). `FR` is served by the IGN Géoplateforme.
`limit`	integer	From 1 to 5, `5` by default.
`language`	string	`en` (default), `fr`, `de`, `it`. Closed list: any other value is refused with `400 bad_language`. `it` is accepted, but Photon does not label in Italian: labels then come back in the local language of each place (Milano, München).

{
  "query": "10 rue de Rivoli, Paris",
  "source": "geoplateforme",
  "results": [
    {
      "label": "10 Rue de Rivoli, 75004 Paris",
      "lon": 2.35704, "lat": 48.85655,
      "type": "address", "confidence": 0.96,
      "country": "France", "countryCode": "FR",
      "region": "Île-de-France", "locality": "Paris", "postalCode": "75004",
      "street": "Rue de Rivoli", "houseNumber": "10"
    }
  ],
  "attribution": "© IGN Géoplateforme, Base Adresse Nationale (Licence Ouverte 2.0)",
  "usage": { "dailyLimit": 500, "usedToday": 12, "countsTowardQuota": false }
}

Any field a source does not provide is null: a locality has neither house number nor postal code, and the shape of the answer never changes.

type is always one of these seven values and of no other: address (a house number), street, locality (town, district), region, country, venue (a named place: station, hotel, monument) or other. confidence runs from 0 to 1: it is the score returned by the Géoplateforme, rounded to three decimals, when it answers, and a value computed from the rank and the precision of the result for Photon, which returns none.

Address search is not counted against the monthly quota, which counts route calculations only. It has its own cap of 500 searches per account per day (UTC), reported in the X-Geocode-Limit and X-Geocode-Used headers and in the usage field. The per-second rate of the plan applies as everywhere else, and a search identical to another one from the last 24 hours is served from cache (X-Cache: hit).

Results come from Photon, on OpenStreetMap data, across Europe, and from the IGN Géoplateforme (Base Adresse Nationale) in France. The Géoplateforme hands the search over to Photon in three cases, and only these: it is unavailable, it returns nothing, or its best confidence is below 0.4, which is what a place name such as Tour Eiffel gets from an address database. Photon takes over only when it does find something: weak candidates beat an empty list. The source field says which one answered.

Errors

Status	Code	Meaning
400	`bad_*`, `too_long`	Invalid request (message explains the field). For `/v1/geocode`: `bad_query`, `bad_near`, `bad_country`, `bad_limit`, `bad_language`.
401	`invalid_key`	Missing, unknown or revoked key.
422	`no_route`, `out_of_coverage`	No route between these points for this vehicle, or a point outside Europe.
429	`rate_limited`	Plan rate exceeded (requests per second, whole account): retry after the `Retry-After` header.
429	`quota_exceeded`	Free plan quota reached for the month.
429	`geocode_daily_limit`	Daily address-search cap reached (500 per account); it resets at midnight UTC.
404	`not_found`	Unknown endpoint: `POST /v1/routes`, `POST /v1/geocode`, `GET /v1/status`.
503	`engine_capacity`, `engine_unavailable`	Temporary, retry later.

Attribution

Display the text of the attribution field next to the route or the results you show. It is a condition of use of the API, free and paid plans alike.

Routing: © On va où ? · © openrouteservice by HeiGIT · © OpenStreetMap contributors
Address search, photon source: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · geocoding by Photon (komoot)
Address search, geoplateforme source: © IGN Géoplateforme, Base Adresse Nationale (Licence Ouverte 2.0)

Guides

Code examples

curl, JavaScript, Python, a MapLibre map and a Postman collection, tested against the live API: github.com/onvaou-app/routing-api-examples (MIT).

MCP server (AI assistants)

Let Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client search an address and compute routes directly: app.onvaou/itineraires in the official MCP registry, npm package onvaou-itineraires-mcp, two read-only tools, compute_route and geocode_address.

geocode_address finds an address, compute_route computes the route and its three variants: the assistant reads, it changes nothing. Each computation counts as one request of your plan, free plan included; address searches are not counted. Bike, scooter, motorcycle, wheelchair and walking routes, anywhere in Europe.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "onvaou-itineraires": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "onvaou-itineraires-mcp"],
      "env": { "OVO_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Pricing

Monthly subscription, no commitment, prices in euros excluding VAT. Every plan includes every feature; only volume, rate and commercial use change. One request = one route calculation returning up to three variants.

Plan	Price / month	Requests / month	Rate	Overage / 1,000
Découverte	0 €	10,000	1 req/s	blocked (non-commercial)
Solo	19 €	20,000	2 req/s	1.00 €
Starter	59 €	75,000	3 req/s	0.90 €
Pro	169 €	225,000	10 req/s	0.80 €
Business	449 €	750,000	25 req/s	0.65 €
Custom	quote	above 750,000	dedicated	coverage outside Europe, SLA

Subscribe and manage your plan at console.onvaou.app. Card payment by Stripe.

FAQ

Is there a free plan?

Yes: 10,000 requests per month for development and non-commercial use, without a credit card.

Can I use it in a commercial app?

Yes, from the Solo plan (19 € per month). Show the attribution next to the displayed route (OpenStreetMap data).

Which area is covered?

All of Europe, on every plan. For other regions, contact us (Custom plan). Points outside the coverage return 422 out_of_coverage.

Which vehicles are supported?

Bike, e-bike, kick scooter, motorcycle, wheelchair and walking, each with its own profile.

How is the safe variant chosen?

For bikes and scooters, it is the route with the highest share of cycle lanes and the fewest main roads among the alternatives. For motorcycles, it is computed avoiding motorways.