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elements/geometry not working anymore (403) #346
Description
Bug Description
Since about 10 days the endpoint https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elements/geometry doesn't work anymore and an Error 403: You don't have permission to access this resource is returned by the Apache server.
General Information
The bug can be minimally reproduced with the curl GET or POST commands from the documentation:
curl -i -X POST https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elements/geometry \
--data-urlencode 'bboxes=8.625,49.3711,8.7334,49.4397' \
--data-urlencode 'time=2019-09-01' \
--data-urlencode 'filter=amenity=bicycle_rental and type:node'
returns:
HTTP/2 403
strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains;
content-length: 280
content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
date: Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:07:43 GMT
server: Apache/2.4.58 (Ubuntu)
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>403 Forbidden</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Forbidden</h1>
<p>You don't have permission to access this resource.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache/2.4.58 (Ubuntu) Server at api.ohsome.org Port 443</address>
</body></html>
Expected Behaviour
Returning the geojson file corresponding to the query
Further Information
This issue seems to affect only the endpoints /geometry and /centroid:
# Fails too: centroid extraction
curl -i -X POST https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elements/centroid \
--data-urlencode 'bboxes=8.625,49.3711,8.7334,49.4397' \
--data-urlencode 'time=2019-09-01' \
--data-urlencode 'filter=amenity=bicycle_rental and type:node'
All the other endpoints work normally:
# Works: API metadata
curl -i https://api.ohsome.org/v1/metadata
# Works: count aggregation
curl -i -X POST https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elements/count \
--data-urlencode 'bboxes=8.625,49.3711,8.7334,49.4397' \
--data-urlencode 'time=2019-09-01' \
--data-urlencode 'filter=amenity=bicycle_rental and type:node'
# Works: bbox extraction
curl -i -X POST https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elements/bbox \
--data-urlencode 'bboxes=8.625,49.3711,8.7334,49.4397' \
--data-urlencode 'time=2019-09-01' \
--data-urlencode 'filter=amenity=bicycle_rental and type:node'
# Works: full history geometry extraction
curl -i -X POST https://api.ohsome.org/v1/elementsFullHistory/geometry \
--data-urlencode 'bboxes=8.625,49.3711,8.7334,49.4397' \
--data-urlencode 'time=2019-01-01,2019-09-01' \
--data-urlencode 'filter=amenity=bicycle_rental and type:node'
Error Messages, Logs, Screenshots
403 Forbidden: You don't have permission to access this resource.
Additional Information
My more complex script is based on ohsome-py which utilizes ohsome-api but the issue here is on the geometry endpoint since the bug is reproducible with curl therefore any additional information on the python packages in question is irrelevant
Activity
Hagellach37 commentedon Aug 24, 2026
Hey @fratambot ,
we have seen a huge increase in number of requests for the ohsome API extraction endpoints over the past months. Hence, we had to restrict access to these endpoints.
At the same time we are moving towards ohsome API v2.0. This will come with user management and api keys to better control excessive requests.
I would suggest, that you create an API key and check out the new API version and adjust your scripts accordingly.
more details here: https://api.heigit.org/ohsome-api/v2-rc/docs#/