Data
Where the facts come from
Every fact on Together comes from a named, openly licensed source. I copy the data onto Together's own server, so your browser never contacts these providers, and Wikipedia never sees your visit.
Every source, at a glance
| Source | Licence | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| ADSB.lol | ODbL 1.0 | Where airline flights are right now Contains information from ADSB.lol, made available under the ODbL. Our filtered extract of airline flights is available under the ODbL too. |
| Apple Music charts | Apple's public marketing feed, subject to Apple's terms; artwork and names belong to their owners | Music charts by country, off until you turn them on Most-played songs by country on an optional layer, read by our server. |
| Beck et al. (2023) Köppen-Geiger maps | CC BY 4.0 | The type of climate each city has 1991-2020, 1 km; Scientific Data 10, 724 (2023) · copied 2026-09-25 |
| CelesTrak | Public orbital data, shared by CelesTrak for general use; check its terms before reuse | Satellites and the ISS on the map, off until you turn them on Orbits for the optional satellite layer, read by our server every six hours; positions are worked out in your browser. |
| CEPII BACI | Etalab Open Licence 2.0 | Version 202601, 2024 trade in goods, US dollars; product names from the Harvard Growth Lab (CC0) · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Deep Star Maps 2020: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; Gaia DR2 star data: ESA/Gaia/DPAC | NASA media usage guidelines (generally not subject to copyright); credit requested | The Milky Way behind the 3D globe, built from Gaia DR2, Hipparcos-2 and Tycho-2, resized and tone-mapped by us |
| ESPN | An unofficial public feed with no published licence; crests and names belong to their clubs | Sports teams, scores and squads on the map, off until you turn them on Teams, scores and squads on the optional sports layer, read by our server; nothing about you is sent to it. |
| ETOPO1 Global Relief Model (NOAA) | Public domain | The heights of mountains and hills in the 3D map, and the land of the last ice age Land heights every quarter degree, via NOAA ERDDAP |
| Eurostat | Reuse authorised with acknowledgement (Eurostat copyright notice) | Guests from one European country staying in another Source: Eurostat (tour_occ_arnraw). Arrivals at tourist accommodation by country of residence; rounded. · copied 2026-09-25 |
| FAOSTAT | CC BY 4.0 | The crops each country grows, and the foods that give it the most energy FAO. Crops and livestock products; Food Balances. FAOSTAT. · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi | CC 4.0 BY | Ships moving around Finland right now Ship positions for Finnish waters, rounded |
| GBIF | CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records only | The birds recorded most often in each country GBIF.org occurrence search, birds of Least Concern recorded since 2006; English names from Wikidata · copied 2026-09-25 |
| GeoNames | CC BY 4.0 | The places you can choose, their populations, heights, capitals, currencies and neighbours |
| Gerardus Mercator, Nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio (1569) | Public domain | The old map in Then and now Bibliothèque nationale de France copy, composited on Wikimedia Commons |
| Global Energy Monitor, Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker | CC BY 4.0 | Operating and in-construction gas pipeline routes on the infrastructure layer Operating and in-construction gas pipeline routes, copied into a simplified local map file |
| Glottolog 5.3 | CC BY 4.0 | The families that languages belong to Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath & Bank; language families, matched to CLDR languages · copied 2026-09-25 |
| holidays (Python package) | MIT | Public holidays Version 0.105; national public holidays, 2026-2027; commemorations of conflict and sovereignty left out · copied 2026-09-25 |
| HydroBASINS (WWF HydroSHEDS) | HydroSHEDS licence (attribution) | Where the rain falling on each city ends up Lehner & Grill 2013; outlets named with Natural Earth marine areas (public domain) · copied 2026-09-25 |
| HYG star database v4.4 (David Nash, astronexus) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Positions, brightness and colour of the naked-eye stars (to magnitude 6.5) in the night sky behind the 3D globe. Our cut of it, public/data/sky-stars-v1.json, is shared under the same licence |
| KiwiSDR public list | A community list of receivers their owners choose to make public; no licence is stated | Shortwave and CB receivers on the map, off until you turn them on Shortwave and CB receivers on an optional layer. You contact a receiver only if you open one. |
| Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs) | Free tier of a public API; attribution expected. Check terms for commercial use | Rocket launches on the map, off until you turn them on Rocket launches on an optional layer, read by our server hourly. The flight drawn on the map is our own illustration. |
| MET Norway (Norwegian Meteorological Institute) | CC BY 4.0 | The weather in two places right now Locationforecast 2.0, fetched by our server for coarse places and cached |
| NASA Earth Observatory: Blue Marble and Black Marble, via NASA GIBS | Public domain (CC0) | Satellite colour and night lights as you zoom in We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). |
| NASA POWER | CC BY 4.0 | A year of temperatures, rainfall and cloud Climatology 2001-2020 (MERRA-2 and CERES SYN1deg), read from the POWER Zarr store · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Natural Earth | Public domain | Coastlines, lakes, rivers and glaciers on the map (to 1:10 million up close), the mountains and valleys layer, and the maps on share cards Land, lakes, rivers and country label points for the map; simplified geographic silhouettes identify regional chat rooms; no borders are drawn on the map |
| openfootball / football.json | CC0 1.0 | Football results and coming games for each place's clubs Results and fixtures for the top football leagues it covers, fetched by our server and cached |
| OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap | Map data from OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0; tiles from OpenMapTiles and OpenFreeMap | Roads and buildings when you zoom right in Roads and building footprints when zoomed right in, through our server. House looks are generated; only the footprints are real. |
| OpenInfraMap and OpenStreetMap contributors | Open Database Licence 1.0 | A dated, generalised low-zoom snapshot of mapped communication lines, including fibre where OpenStreetMap records the medium. Missing routes are not treated as absent infrastructure. |
| OpenStreetMap contributors | Open Database Licence 1.0 | Mapped submarine communications cables crossing oceans and seas on the infrastructure layer Dated, simplified snapshots of mapped submarine communications cables, landing stations and data centres. Community coverage is incomplete and is not suitable for navigation. |
| PB2002 plate model (Bird 2003) | ODC-By 1.0 | The tectonic plate beneath each city Peter Bird (2003); GIS conversion by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Radio Browser | A free, open community directory; it states the service can be used freely and its data mirrored, and publishes no separate data licence | Radio stations on the map, off until you turn them on A sample of stations that list a place, read by our server every six hours; nothing about you is sent and we never report plays. Names and places are as the stations list them. Pressing play on the map connects your browser straight to that station, which can see your IP address; the stream is the one thing your browser fetches from outside Together. |
| Steam top sellers | An unofficial store feed with no published licence; names and art belong to their owners | Games charts by country, off until you turn them on Top sellers by country on an optional layer. Popularity, not sales figures. |
| Stellarium modern sky culture (the 88 IAU constellations) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Constellation lines and Latin names, an astronomy layer switched off by default. Our cut of it, public/data/sky-constellations-v1.json, is shared under the same licence |
| TalkFuse | Headlines belong to their outlets; we keep only the headline, place, outlet, time and a link | What the world is talking about, as optional context on the map Places are as TalkFuse reports them and can be approximate or wrong. Fetched by our server and cached for five minutes; nothing about you is sent. Outlet ratings are TalkFuse's own editorial list, read per outlet and cached for days; they rate the outlet, not the story. |
| Terrain Tiles (Mapzen, on AWS Open Data) | Open data from many sources, with attribution | Detailed mountains and valleys as you zoom in, on the flat map and the 3D globe ArcticDEM terrain data DEM(s) were created from DigitalGlobe, Inc., imagery and funded under National Science Foundation awards 1043681, 1559691, and 1542736; Australia terrain data © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2017; Austria terrain data © offene Daten Österreichs – Digitales Geländemodell (DGM) Österreich; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada; Europe terrain data produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union - EU-DEM layers; Global ETOPO1 terrain data U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Mexico terrain data source: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016; New Zealand terrain data Copyright 2011 Crown copyright (c) Land Information New Zealand and the New Zealand Government; Norway terrain data © Kartverket; United Kingdom terrain data © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015; United States 3DEP (formerly NED) and global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. |
| The GDELT Project | Free for any use with a citation to the GDELT Project and a link to its website | Optional lines between countries, each with the reports behind it Optional lines between countries when five or more outlets in three days reported fighting or diplomatic talks involving their governments or militaries. Machine-coded and sometimes wrong, so it is off until checked. Read by our server, never by your browser. |
| UNHCR Refugee Data Finder | UNHCR data, listed on the Humanitarian Data Exchange under CC BY-IGO | Refugees and people displaced at home, on conflict cards Refugees and people displaced at home on conflict cards, read by our server. |
| Unicode CLDR | Unicode License v3 | Languages and how widely they are spoken, the working week, clocks, paper sizes and currency symbols Release 48.2.2 · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Virtual Radar Server standing data | CC0 1.0 | Where flights are going, and which aircraft fly them |
| Wikidata | CC0 1.0 | When places were founded, their rivers and seas, World Heritage Sites, photographs and Antarctic research stations |
| Wikidata | CC0 1.0 | Films shot and books set in each city; elements and minerals named after places · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Wikidata | CC0 1.0 | Twin towns, sports clubs and players, and companies Twin towns (current, with a suppression list), sports clubs and players by country, companies and products · copied 2026-09-25 |
| Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons | Text CC BY-SA 4.0; photographs under their own free licences, credited | Short introductions to each place, and photographs with their authors Fetched by our server when a place is first opened, and kept for 30 days |
| World Bank | CC BY 4.0 | Forest, farmland, towns, renewable electricity, visitors and yearly exchange rates World Development Indicators · copied 2026-09-25 |
| World Magnetic Model 2025 (NOAA/BGS) | Public domain | Which way a compass points, and how steeply the magnetic field dips |
Using the data yourself
The same list is available as JSON, alongside a small public API for places, weather, land height and the sky, on the developers page.
How the gathering works
Each dataset is downloaded in bulk, checked against its terms, and turned into small files about each country and city. When you compare two places, your browser reads just those two files from Together's own server. Wikipedia introductions and photographs are fetched by the server the first time a place is opened, kept for 30 days, and shown only with their licence and credit. Nothing about you is ever sent to a provider.
What is on hold, and why
Some sources I looked at are only free for non-commercial use, or have terms I could not confirm, so they are not used yet: weather forecasts, music data and UNESCO's list of living heritage among them. Others carry a real risk of framing places politically, such as data about internet censorship, and are left out on purpose.
What Together will never use
People-search and data brokers, face recognition, scraped social media profiles, precise location from IP addresses, and anything that guesses a person's religion or ethnicity from their name. A public web address is not a licence.