The Original Team
FreeRoam was built by Austin and Rachel while living full-time in their RV. It served over 100,000 users as a free, open-source tool for finding dispersed camping. When hosting costs exceeded community donations, Austin made the difficult decision to shut it down.
The Revival
We were avid FreeRoam users. When we returned to off-grid living while running our fitness app Saturday, we found FreeRoam gone. This revival runs on infrastructure that costs a few dollars a year instead of hundreds per month — the cost problem that killed the original is solved.
Alex Harrison & Michelle Howe — Saturday Inc.
How It Survives
FreeRoam's tile server and API costs scaled with users. This version serves map tiles from Cloudflare R2 (pennies per month), routes through free public APIs, and runs the entire backend on Cloudflare Workers' free tier.
Licensing & Attribution
- FreeRoam's front-end code was released under the Unlicense (public domain). This revival uses those patterns with gratitude.
- Basemap: Protomaps / OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
- Routing: FOSSGIS Valhalla (community-hosted) + OpenRouteService
- Geocoding: Photon (Komoot)
- US public lands: USGS PAD-US, USFS, BLM (public domain)
- US cell coverage: FCC Broadband Data Collection
- US recreation: RIDB + USFS EDW recreation sites (public domain)
- US roads/trails: USFS Motor Vehicle Use Maps (public domain)
- Canada public lands: CPCAD, provincial Crown land, Parks Canada (Open Government Licence — Canada)
- Canada cell coverage: ISED National Broadband Data (Open Government Licence — Canada)
- Mexico protected areas: CONANP/ANP (datos.gob.mx, Libre Uso MX)
- International cell towers: OpenCelliD (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
- Travel advisories: U.S. Dept of State (public domain)
- OpenStreetMap (ODbL) — POI data + basemap
- Boundaries: Natural Earth (public domain)
- Weather: © OpenWeather
- Satellite/fire/smoke/snow imagery: NASA EOSDIS GIBS