Data sources and method
Why another playground map
Unknown is an answer, not a blank
Most playground listings show a name, a pin and nothing else, which leaves you to drive over and find out whether the gate faces a road, whether the slide bakes in full sun, or whether the nearest restroom is a mile away.
Every profile here separates two things: what a source records, and what nobody has recorded. That second list is deliberate. It is the honest version of a directory built on open data, and it tells you exactly which question to ask before you load the car.
Where the facts come from
Open map data, with the receipts
Playgrounds and their details come from OpenStreetMap, where local mappers record surface, fencing, shade, equipment and accessibility. Official websites and phone numbers come from Overture Maps Places where a record matches. Each profile links to the exact source record and the date it was retrieved.
Private, school-only and customers-only sites are withheld. Indoor commercial play centres are out of scope. No ratings, no reviews, no “best” lists, and nothing copied from other services.
Read the detailed method and licences ↓The inventory
The playgrounds themselves come from OpenStreetMap, where a playground is mapped with the tag leisure=playground. OpenStreetMap is the open source that also records the details families actually ask about: surface, fencing, shade, wheelchair access, age ranges, opening hours, and equipment such as swings or a sandpit.
Business listing data from Overture Maps Places (release 2026-08-19.0, retrieved 2026-09-23) is used only in a supporting role: when an Overture record sits on top of a mapped playground, its official website and phone number are attached to that profile. Overture is not used as the inventory, because sampling showed its playground category is dominated by indoor commercial venues and misses most public playgrounds.
How a playground gets a name and a city
Many playgrounds are mapped without a name of their own. Where a nameless playground sits inside a named park, the profile is titled after that park and says so. Where it does not, the record is not published: a page called “Playground” helps nobody.
City and state come from the administrative boundary the playground falls inside, and each profile states which boundary was used. Where no boundary covers the point, the nearest named place is used instead and the profile says so.
What is deliberately withheld
16,403 candidate records were kept out of the published directory. The reasons, in order:
- unnamed and not in a named park — 13,404
- access restricted — 2,394
- same area as a named playground — 178
- outside the united states — 145
- name indicates private or school — 126
- duplicate record — 122
- indoor — 32
- unusable name — 2
Private, members-only, customer-only and school-only sites are withheld because we cannot tell a visitor they may use them. Indoor commercial play centres are out of scope. Records of the same play area are merged, and anything we cannot place in a real city is held back rather than guessed at.
Unknown is a real answer
Every profile separates what a source records from what nobody has recorded. If the fence, the restroom or the surface is not on the page, no source documents it — that is not the same as “there is none”. Nothing here is checked in person, and open map data can be out of date.
Licences and attribution
Playground data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence 1.0. Any database derived from this site's playground data carries the same obligations. Overture Places records are published under provider-specific permissive licences (CDLA Permissive 2.0, Apache 2.0 and CC0); each profile lists the provider and licence of the record it used. Map images are served by Google Maps under Google's own terms.
Nothing on this site is copied from Google reviews, ratings, descriptions or photos, and no municipal or competitor prose is reproduced.
Freshness
Directory generated 2026-10-11 from map data retrieved 2026-09-23. 10,804 playgrounds are published. Corrections are welcome and are checked against a public source before anything changes: report a correction.