Google Maps vs OsmAnd vs Maps.me: Which Offline Map Actually Works When You Have No Signal?

The scenario is always the same: you’re in a tunnel, a forest, a foreign country, or a rural stretch with zero mobile data, and you need the map to work. Every major navigation app claims offline capability. Not every one of them delivers it equally — and one of the three apps in this comparison has changed so dramatically under new ownership that recommending it without caveats would be doing you a disservice.

This comparison focuses specifically on offline performance: how each app downloads map data, how it behaves when the internet is genuinely gone, what it can and can’t do without a connection, and which type of user each one is actually built for. We tested all three on a Motorola Moto G84 running Android 14, with mobile data completely disabled during offline testing.

The Short Answer Before the Detail

App	Offline Map Download	Navigation Without Signal	Search Offline	Map Expiry	Free Limit	Best For
Google Maps	Region-based, capped area per download	✅ Turn-by-turn, voice	⚠️ Limited — no POI search, address only	1 year (auto-renews via Wi-Fi)	Unlimited regions (up to 15 GB total)	Urban navigation, occasional offline use
OsmAnd	Country/region downloads, unlimited storage	✅ Full turn-by-turn, voice, lane guidance	✅ Full — addresses, POIs, coordinates, offline	Never expires	7 free map downloads (paid for more)	Power users, hikers, cyclists, offline-first
Maps.me	Country/region downloads	✅ Basic turn-by-turn	✅ Present offline	Never expires	10 free regions (then paywall)	Used to be the easy choice — see below

Google Maps Offline: The Most Convenient, With Real Limitations

Google Maps offline works by downloading a rectangular region of your choice. You navigate to an area on the map, zoom to the level you want, tap your profile photo › Offline maps › Select your own map, and drag the selection box to cover what you need. The region downloads to local storage and remains available for navigation without any internet connection.

The offline experience is better than most people expect — and worse in specific ways that matter. On the positive side: turn-by-turn navigation with voice guidance works completely offline. The app uses your device’s GPS to track your position and route you to your destination with the same voice instructions you get online. For driving on pre-downloaded roads, Google Maps offline is fully functional.

The limitations are three, and they’re significant. First, offline search is restricted. You cannot search for a restaurant, gas station, or coffee shop by type while offline — the POI database is not included in the offline download. You can search for a specific address if you know it, but exploratory searches (“find pharmacies near me”) require a connection. Second, the region download is bounded by a rectangle rather than by administrative boundaries, which means downloading France means drawing a box over France — you may capture parts of neighboring countries or miss border regions depending on how you draw it. Third, real-time traffic, live transit times, and business information are all online-only. The offline map is a road network and address database only.

Map expiry: Google updated this from 30 days to 1 year. Downloaded maps now remain valid for 12 months and auto-renew over Wi-Fi when 15 days remain before expiry. For occasional travelers, this is no longer the persistent annoyance it used to be.

Storage cap: Google Maps offline is capped at 15 GB of total downloaded area across all regions. For most users this is ample. For users who want country-level downloads across multiple countries simultaneously, it can become a constraint.

When Google Maps Offline Fails You

The failure mode is predictable: you arrive in a new city and want to find the nearest open pharmacy, you’re in a rural area and want to search for hiking trailheads, or you’re outside the rectangle you downloaded and the map goes blank. Google Maps offline is designed for a user who knows where they’re going and has downloaded the right area in advance. It is not designed for exploratory use without a connection.

OsmAnd: The Most Capable Offline App, With a Learning Curve

OsmAnd (OpenStreetMap Automated Navigation Directions) is built from the ground up as an offline-first app. Maps are downloaded by country or region as vector files — meaning they contain the full map data rather than cached tiles, and they never expire. A downloaded map of Germany remains usable two years later without any update or internet access. If you want to update it, you can — OsmAnd typically refreshes map data monthly from the OpenStreetMap community database — but the choice is yours.

The offline capability goes substantially further than Google Maps. When offline, OsmAnd gives you full POI search — you can search for pharmacies, gas stations, ATMs, restaurants, hiking trails, and hundreds of other categories completely without a connection. The search works against the locally stored map data rather than querying a server. This is the most practically important difference between OsmAnd and Google Maps offline: with OsmAnd, the offline mode is not a degraded experience. It is the primary mode the app was designed for.

Navigation in OsmAnd offline includes lane guidance, speed limit display, turn-by-turn voice instructions, and contour lines if the terrain plugin is enabled. You can set routing profiles for car, bicycle, pedestrian, boat, or aircraft — each with its own routing logic. The cycling profile, for instance, routes through paths and cycle lanes that Google Maps driving mode would never suggest. For hikers and cyclists navigating off-road areas, OsmAnd often has trail data that simply doesn’t exist in Google’s dataset.

The free version of OsmAnd limits you to 7 map downloads. After that, you need OsmAnd+ (one-time purchase, approximately €3–5) or an OsmAnd Pro subscription (~€10/year) to unlock unlimited downloads. For anyone planning to use the app across multiple countries or regions, the paid version is the realistic option — but the price is low enough that it’s not a meaningful barrier.

The real barrier is the interface. OsmAnd is not an app designed for casual users. The settings menu runs to dozens of screens. Enabling contour lines requires installing a plugin. The routing profiles need to be configured before they work optimally. First-time users accustomed to Google Maps frequently find it overwhelming. The navigation screen itself shows more information than most people need, and it takes time to learn which elements to turn off. Users who invest that time consistently describe OsmAnd as a superior offline navigation tool. Users who don’t tend to give up and return to Google Maps.

OsmAnd Feature	Offline?	Notes
Turn-by-turn navigation (car)	✅ Full	Voice guidance, lane guidance, speed limits
Cycling / pedestrian routing	✅ Full	Uses OSM trail data — far more complete than Google in rural areas
POI search (pharmacies, cafes, etc.)	✅ Full	One of OsmAnd’s most important advantages over Google Maps offline
Address search	✅ Present	Less reliable than Google in some regions — OSM data quality varies
Contour lines / terrain	✅ With plugin	Separate download required; excellent for hiking
Wikipedia POI info	✅ With plugin	Download Wikipedia summaries for offline reading at POIs
Map editing (contribute to OSM)	⚠️ Requires connection	Offline edits queued and submitted when back online
Real-time traffic	❌ Online only	No offline equivalent
Public transport schedules	❌ Online only	Can view routes but not live departure times

Maps.me: What It Used to Be, What It Is Now, and What to Use Instead

Maps.me deserves the most detailed treatment because its situation is the most complicated — and because a large number of travelers still have it installed based on recommendations that predate 2021.

The original Maps.me, released in 2014 and acquired by Mail.ru that same year, was genuinely excellent. It had one of the fastest offline map rendering engines available, a clean interface, and full offline POI search using OpenStreetMap data. Backpackers and budget travelers embraced it as the standard recommendation for anyone needing offline maps without fuss.

In November 2020, Mail.ru sold Maps.me to Daegu Limited, a subsidiary of Parity.com, a payments processing company. The new owner discontinued open-source development, transitioned Maps.me to proprietary software, and began pivoting the app toward fintech. In September 2022, they launched a crypto wallet and prepaid Mastercard integration inside the navigation app. In 2023, a Guardian article covered how the crypto payments venture — backed by Sam Bankman-Fried — had collapsed following the FTX implosion, resulting in the loss of the app’s Mastercard partnership. Free map downloads were capped at 10 regions in mid-2023, briefly lifted, then re-capped in 2024. The OSM community’s analysis of the current Maps.me app found that it sends user activity and location data to tracking services even when operating on locally downloaded offline maps — behavior that contradicts the core expectation of an offline maps app.

The current Maps.me works as a navigation tool. The offline maps load, the turn-by-turn navigation functions, and the POI database is present. But the app that longtime travelers trusted is structurally different from what it has become: it is now a proprietary, ad-supported, subscription-paywalled app operated by a company whose primary business is payments processing, not mapping. Users who stored years of bookmarks and routes reported having their data wiped without warning after the 2022 transition.

The Direct Replacement: Organic Maps

When Maps.me went proprietary in December 2020, two of the original Maps.me developers — Alexander Borsuk and Viktar Havaka — forked the last open-source version of the codebase and launched Organic Maps in June 2021. By December 2025, Organic Maps had reached 6 million installs.

Organic Maps is, in practical terms, what Maps.me used to be: a fast, clean, offline-first OSM-based navigation app with no ads, no trackers, no subscription paywall, and no data collection. Map downloads are unlimited and free. The interface is simpler than OsmAnd and more approachable for users who want offline maps without configuration overhead. It covers driving, walking, cycling, and hiking. It works on Android and iOS.

The app’s own governance had some turbulence in 2025 — a community dispute over transparency and a fork called CoMaps emerged — but as of early 2026 both Organic Maps and CoMaps are actively maintained, available on the Play Store and F-Droid, and functionally equivalent for everyday offline navigation use. Either is a better choice than the current Maps.me for users who originally chose Maps.me for its privacy and offline-first design.

Head-to-Head: The Offline Scenarios That Actually Happen

Scenario	Google Maps Offline	OsmAnd	Maps.me / Organic Maps
Driving on pre-planned route, no signal	✅ Works fully	✅ Works fully	✅ Works fully
Search for pharmacy with no signal	❌ Not possible	✅ Full POI search	✅ POI search present
Hiking on trails not on main roads	⚠️ Hit or miss — trail data limited	✅ Best option — OSM trail data is extensive	✅ Good trail coverage via OSM
Cycling on dedicated cycle routes	⚠️ Limited routing options	✅ Dedicated cycling profile with cycle-lane routing	⚠️ Basic cycling routing
Navigate in a foreign country without roaming	⚠️ Works if area pre-downloaded; limited search	✅ Download whole country, full functionality offline	⚠️ Capped at 10 free regions — multi-country trip may hit limit
View satellite imagery offline	❌ Online only	❌ Online only (3rd-party tiles can be added)	❌ Online only
Navigate without a Google account	❌ Requires Google account for offline download	✅ No account required	⚠️ Account required for Pro features
Privacy — no tracking while navigating	❌ Google collects location data	✅ Open source, no telemetry by default	❌ Current Maps.me sends data to trackers

App Size and Storage Reality

Install size matters on budget Android phones with 32–64 GB of internal storage, where every gigabyte counts. Here is the realistic storage picture for each app:

App	App Install Size	Example: Germany offline map	Example: Brazil offline map	Map storage grows with use?
Google Maps	~120 MB	~1.5–2 GB (region-based)	~2–3 GB (region-based)	Yes — cache expands significantly with regular use
OsmAnd	~100 MB	~800 MB (vector)	~700 MB (vector)	Only when you explicitly download map updates
Maps.me / Organic Maps	~230 MB / ~80 MB	~600 MB (vector)	~500 MB (vector)	Only when you explicitly download map updates

The key difference: Google Maps downloads raster tiles (pre-rendered image layers) for the rectangular region, which produce larger files than the vector maps used by OsmAnd and Organic Maps. Vector maps store the underlying data rather than rendered images, which is why OsmAnd’s Germany download is roughly half the size of Google Maps’ Germany coverage — despite being more feature-complete. Vector maps also render at any zoom level from the same file, while raster tiles degrade when you zoom in beyond the download resolution.

The Decision: Which One Should You Install?

There is no single right answer, but the use cases map onto specific users clearly enough that the choice usually becomes obvious.

Install Google Maps as your primary + download offline areas when needed if: you live in an urban area, mostly drive on main roads, and only need offline maps occasionally — for tunnels, flights, or brief signal gaps. Google Maps’ online experience is unmatched for urban navigation, real-time transit, live traffic, and business information. Its offline capability is sufficient for planned routes. Its weakness (no offline POI search) rarely matters for someone who only goes offline occasionally.

Install OsmAnd if: you travel internationally without roaming, hike or cycle regularly, or need maps that work completely and independently of any internet connection. OsmAnd has the steepest learning curve of the three but the deepest offline capability. It is the right tool for anyone who needs maps to genuinely work as a standalone device — not as a degraded version of an online service.

Install Organic Maps instead of Maps.me if: you want the clean, simple offline-first experience that Maps.me used to offer — fast rendering, easy downloads, no configuration, no account required. Organic Maps is the direct spiritual successor to the 2019-era Maps.me that travelers recommended to each other. The current Maps.me is a different product with a different business model. Organic Maps is what it was.

Do not install Maps.me in 2025 if privacy matters to you. The app sends location and activity data to tracking services even in offline mode. This is documented by the OSM community and stands in direct contrast to the expectations a user of an “offline map app” would reasonably have.

The Practical Setup Most Travelers Use

The most common real-world approach among frequent travelers is to use two apps in parallel: Google Maps for online use and urban navigation (where its POI database, reviews, and transit integration are superior to any alternative), and either OsmAnd or Organic Maps installed and pre-loaded with country maps for when internet access is unavailable or expensive. The two apps don’t conflict — they use different map sources and don’t share data. You can leave Organic Maps running in the background while Google Maps is the daily driver, and switch to it the moment you cross a border or lose signal.

If you go this route, download country maps in Organic Maps or OsmAnd before you travel, not when you arrive. Both apps require the map download to complete before offline use — obvious in principle, but easy to forget when you’re already on the plane.

Conclusion

The honest summary of where each app stands in 2025: Google Maps has the best online experience of any navigation app and a functional offline mode that covers most users’ needs for planned routes — but it isn’t a true offline tool, and the moment you need to find something without a connection, it falls short. OsmAnd is the most capable offline navigation app available on Android, fully functional without any internet connection, but it asks for patience and configuration that many users aren’t willing to invest. Maps.me is no longer the app it was — its ownership, business model, and privacy posture have changed fundamentally, and Organic Maps exists as its direct open-source replacement.

For the majority of Android users, the practical answer is Google Maps as the daily driver with Organic Maps installed and pre-loaded for anywhere signal is unreliable. Together they cost nothing, take under 30 minutes to set up, and cover every offline scenario you’re likely to encounter.