When I input the address, it narrows it down to a city block, which is okay I guess, but not ideal.
I came here to say I love Magic Earth. While I mainly use it for public transport navigation (which is simply excellent), I also tried using it for driving and it does the job well. Live traffic is also a nice touch.
There are obviously some minor issues (the UI feels a little dated on Android as of 2025.11.07), but I don’t see a reason why this shouldn’t be included in the recommendations.
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Hmm… I’ll have to give Magic Earth a go then because live traffic is the main reason I can’t let go of Google Maps.
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Well, seems offline maps and traffic aware navigation are behind a subscription now. That’s a major loss. Anyone else knows what happened here and how that changes the recommendation for this app?
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Sadly expected from a proprietary app. I get needing to make money but proprietary developers seem to put little to no thought on good ways to do that, instead resorting to adding artificial barriers or anti-features.
I hope Organic Maps/CoMaps will add real-time traffic to their apps, it’s the only thing missing.
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Same. Still using Magic Earth for traffic (until that gets paywalled as well) and now I’ll have to use Organic Maps for offline.
Its 15€/year is not that expansive and they need to run the traffic data somehow
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For me, this make it a no go. The criteria is that you can use offline maps. While we haven´t said apps need to be free, there would at least need to be a way to pay privately (cash or XMR) which I doubt is the case.
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It’s $8 USD if you buy the license from their website instead of Google/Apple. Sucks they only take card payment, but you can use a virtual card like Privacy.com or probably a Visa gift card.
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Yeah, it’s really cheap, so I’ll probably pay for it.
Price is not an issue I think, it’s mostly the privacy aspect.
Not sure how hard it is to have real time traffic but I guess it takes quite some resources and not easy to self-host. 
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I’d assume you could pay with a Visa gift card but I haven’t tried it. Either way you’re sharing location data with them. Haven’t heard of any self hosted solutions that include live traffic data.
It seems to me that Magic Earth probably doesn’t meet Privacy Guides’ criteria.
- Must retain core functionality when offline and allow users to download maps for offline use.
If offline use and other critical features are paid, then…
- Must not collect PII per their privacy policy.
Section 6.3 of Magic Earth Terms of Service states:
Purchases of Paid Services are usually billed and managed by the third-party app store or payment provider through which you obtained the Service (for example, the Apple App Store or other authorised platforms). Your payments are subject to that provider’s own terms and conditions.
If they only accept card/Apple/Google, I’m not sure it meets the “no PII” criteria.
- Must not require users to create an account with them.
Also not sure if they meet this criteria either. They’d require an account with Google/Apple or you buy their license keys by providing them with a credit card and email address, which sounds like it has many of the same issues of “creating an account” with them.
It’s not a replacement to private payment methods like XMR.
- Requires PII
- Only available in the U.S.
- Still not anonymous
I’ve heard mixed things about them. From requiring information to activate the card to being rejected as a payment method, it doesn’t sound great. Even so, having to go out and physically buy a card (which can be a lot more expensive than what you’re trying to buy) is really inconvenient and costly.
Finally, Magic Earth also doesn’t meet the best-case criteria of being open source. It’s not a hard requirement but it’s a cherry on top these other issues. These issues are fixable but I’m not sure if or when Magic Earth will address them.
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If it were just traffic aware navigation, which of course would have a cost with server overhead… then sure. It’s not there are any alternatives other than the big privacy violating companies.
But Magic Earth is also putting OFFLINE MAPS behind the Paywall requiring a premium subscription. That’s a red flag for the future.
Organic Maps, CoMaps, OSM and others, all do offline maps, so this being now a premium feature, is absurd.
And if they are making offline maps premium, then it’s very likely that other features will go behind the Paywall eventually.
It’s a dilemma for those willing to pay a small price for this right now. Because it’s likely not enough to actually pay their costs and satisfactory profit. Which means they will raise that cost or lock out more features to squeeze more revenue.
It’s probably better that users just refuse this cash grab entirely, and they can learn from the backlash that this isn’t the right strategy.
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Can’t you buy virtual gift cards with XMR on Cake Wallet? Genuinely asking as I have no experience with XMR yet.
I haven’t used it either but by the looks of it, it seems like it might be an option in some cases but with a lot of caveats. That’ll be the case with basically anything involving fiat.
What other features 
Can’t even do slight navigation
Can’t exactly find places you will get “Content Expired”
This app is going to the enshittification cave with the others
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