Beta

Roads: snap to roads

Today: live (Beta) since 11 November 2026.

What it does

Takes a noisy GPS trace and returns the points moved onto the roads the vehicle most likely drove, with the distance along them. Use it for fares by distance driven and for drawing a clean trip line.

In our test, a noisy Lagos trace of 127 points gave 13.53 km against a true route of 13.54 km.

Limits

• Up to 100 points per request. Over it you get too_many_points. Send long trips in pieces that overlap by a few points.
• Trial: 60 requests a minute together with directions, 1,000 a day.

Request

POST https://maps-api.ranamaps.com/v1/roads/snap

curl https://maps-api.ranamaps.com/v1/roads/snap \
  -H "X-Rana-Key: $RANA_SECRET_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"points": [{"lat": 6.4541, "lng": 3.3947}, {"lat": 6.4549, "lng": 3.3952}], "mode": "car", "interpolate": true}'

Answer (example values)

{
  "points": [
    { "lat": 6.45412, "lng": 3.39468, "original_index": 0 },
    { "lat": 6.45488, "lng": 3.39515, "original_index": 1 }
  ],
  "distance_m": 13530,
  "geometry": "o~{zKq}xiE...",
  "attribution": "© Rana Maps © OpenStreetMap"
}

• A point that could not be matched to a road is left out. original_index tells you which of your points each one is.
• interpolate: true also returns the points along the road between them, with original_index: null.
• distance_m is measured along the matched roads, from the first matched point to the last.
• mode (car by default, or okada, keke, bicycle, walk) decides which roads count.

Coverage

All of Nigeria's mapped roads once the Nigeria release is deployed. A road that is missing from the map cannot be snapped to; our contributors add missing roads, mostly in Lagos first.