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Freeware maps for your Garmin GPS device

For our Garmin GPS devices many maps can be purchased from Garmin or third party developers. These maps are very detailed and accurate however they come at a price. Maps are available for many countries . However, if you only occasionally visit a country or region, it is very expensive to buy a map that you might only use one time. That is, unless you have lots of money and want the best of the best.
Luckily for us less fortune, an alternative is available as freeware maps can be found on the internet. On this page you find some links to websites where you can search, find and downloads maps. Many maps are available; routable and non-routable, only POI's to e.g. mountain cabins, citymaps etc. Also you will find links to software that can downloads these maps directly to your Garmin device without using Mapsource. This is a requirement when using freeware maps as Mapsource will not recognise these files.

Links to freeware maps

Mapcenter - On this website you will find a large collection of details maps for many countries. Quality and level of details varies but with the thumbnail displayed you can see if the maps meets you need.

Garmin Map Search- My favourite site where you can scroll, zoom and click on a Googlemap and then all available maps that cover your area are shown. Again quality varies so you may want to experiment.

Information Freeway - Roadmaps for many parts in Europe and a few other populated areas in the world.

Open Streetmap- An Open Source map projects were everyone can submit their GPS tracklogs making maps more detailed over time.

Software for uploading freeware maps

CGPS Mapper offers a freeware program named SendMap for direct upload of maps to you Garmin GPS Device. The link takes you to a donwload page on which you need to scroll quite a long way down before finding this little gem. Be careful as SendMap will erase all existing files from the GPS device prior to dowloading the new files. Therefore, ensure any of your standard IMG files are added in the download list in the SendMap screen, together with the additional freeware IMG files you have downloaded.

Geopainting.com provides a freeware/shareware program named GPSMapEdit for viewing downloaded maps. This is quite useful to determine the quality of the downloaded freeware maps prior to downloading it to your GPS device. This is not possible in MapSource as this program will not allow you to open any IMG files directly.