Isochrone Map — Travel Time Map & Drive Time Map Tool
Click any point to generate a free isochrone map showing nested travel time and drive time zones by car, bike, or foot — see exactly what's reachable within the minutes you choose. No sign-up required. Open fullscreen ↗
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3 Travel Modes
Generate a drive time map for driving, or a travel time map for cycling or walking — each uses the real road, cycle, or footpath network
Nested Zones
Set three time thresholds at once and compare inner, mid, and outer reach in one view
Queued Fairly
Requests are processed one at a time server-side so the shared routing engine stays responsive for everyone
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What Can You Reach in 10, 20, or 30 Minutes?
An isochrone map — also called a travel time map or, for driving specifically, a drive time map — answers a different question than a simple radius circle: not "what's within 5 miles," but "what can I actually reach within a set number of minutes, travelling the real road, cycle, or footpath network." A 10-minute drive time map for a location in a dense city centre might only cover a couple of kilometres, while the same 10 minutes on a rural motorway on-ramp could stretch for over 15 km — an isochrone map captures that difference, a straight-line radius cannot.
Set your three time thresholds in the sidebar, choose a travel mode, and click anywhere on the map. The tool draws three nested, coloured polygons showing your inner, mid, and outer reach from that point, calculated against the OpenStreetMap road network by the open-source Valhalla routing engine.
Isochrone Map, Travel Time Map, Drive Time Map — What's the Difference?
These three terms describe the same underlying idea, just from different angles. Isochrone map is the technical GIS term for a map of equal travel time contours. Travel time map is the plain-language version of the same thing, covering any mode of transport. Drive time map narrows it to one specific mode — driving — and is the term most often used in retail site selection, delivery zone planning, and real estate. This tool generates all three from the same click: switch the travel mode to Driving for a drive time map, or to Cycling/Walking for a travel time map on other modes — the underlying isochrone calculation is identical.
Key Features
3 Travel Modes — driving, cycling, or walking, each using mode-appropriate routing (cars use roads, cyclists use cycle-friendly ways, pedestrians use footpaths)
3 Nested Time Zones — configure inner, mid, and outer thresholds independently, from 1 to 60 minutes each
Click Anywhere — no address lookup required, just click any point on the map
Fair Server-Side Queue — requests are processed one at a time to keep the shared public routing engine available for every visitor
GeoJSON Export — download all three zones as a single file for use in GIS software
Fullscreen Mode — expand for a larger working view
How It Works
Choose a travel mode — driving, cycling, or walking.
Set your three time thresholds in minutes (defaults: 10, 20, 30).
Click any point on the map to drop a pin.
Your request joins a short server-side queue, so it never fires at the same instant as another visitor's request against the shared routing server.
Once processed, three nested coloured zones appear — red (inner), amber (mid), and blue (outer).
Click a new point at any time to recalculate, or download the result as GeoJSON.
Common Use Cases
✓Real Estate: Show a buyer exactly what commute time looks like from a property, not just distance
✓Retail & Delivery: Define a realistic delivery or service catchment based on actual drive time, not a circle
✓Site Selection: Compare candidate locations by how many minutes it takes customers or staff to reach each one
✓Emergency Planning: Visualise realistic response coverage for ambulances, fire crews, or emergency services
✓Urban Planning: Assess walkability — what amenities fall within a genuine 15-minute walk of a neighbourhood
✓Recruitment: Show candidates a realistic commute-time boundary around a job location
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is an isochrone map?
A: An isochrone map shows the area reachable from a point within a given amount of travel time, rather than a straight-line distance. A 10-minute driving isochrone is usually an irregular shape following the actual road network, not a circle — it bulges out along motorways and pinches in where roads are sparse or slow.
Q: Is a travel time map the same as an isochrone map?
A: Yes. "Travel time map" and "isochrone map" describe the same thing — a map of the area reachable within a set number of minutes. "Isochrone" is the technical GIS term; "travel time map" is the everyday name for it. This tool produces one either way, for driving, cycling, or walking.
Q: What is a drive time map used for?
A: A drive time map (an isochrone map limited to the driving mode) shows how far a vehicle can travel by road in a set number of minutes from a point. It is widely used for retail catchment analysis, delivery zone planning, real estate commute comparisons, and site selection — it reflects real road speeds and network layout, unlike a simple mileage radius.
Q: How is this different from the Radius Map tool?
A: Radius Map draws a simple geometric circle at a fixed distance. Isochrone Map calculates the real road, cycle, or footpath network to show what is actually reachable within a chosen number of minutes — a much more realistic picture of accessibility, delivery coverage, or catchment area.
Q: Why does my request sometimes show a short queue before the zones appear?
A: The routing calculations run on a shared public routing server (Valhalla, via OpenStreetMap.de). To keep that free service usable for everyone, requests from every visitor are processed one at a time with a short server-side delay between calls, rather than firing all at once. You will typically wait a few seconds during busy periods.
Q: What do the three coloured zones mean?
A: Each zone is a separate time threshold you set in the sidebar (defaults: 10, 20, and 30 minutes). The zones are nested — the outer (blue) zone contains the mid (amber) zone, which contains the inner (red) zone — so you can compare, for example, a 10-minute walk versus a 30-minute walk from the same point.
Q: Can I export the isochrone zones?
A: Yes. After the zones are generated, click "GeoJSON" to download the three polygons as a single GeoJSON FeatureCollection, ready to open in QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, or geojson.io.
Open Source & Credits
Isochrone routing:Valhalla — open-source routing engine, public instance hosted by OpenStreetMap.de