Self-Hosting a Routing Engine

rendezvous-kit is engine-agnostic — it works with any routing service that can compute isochrones and route matrices. This guide covers self-hosting options so you can run the full pipeline without third-party API keys or rate limits.

Quick Comparison

Engine	Isochrone	Route Matrix	Docker image	Typical RAM	Setup effort
Valhalla	Yes	Yes	ghcr.io/gis-ops/docker-valhalla	2–8 GB	Medium
OSRM	No	Yes	osrm/osrm-backend	1–4 GB	Low
GraphHopper	Yes	Yes	graphhopper/graphhopper	2–6 GB	Low

Recommendation: Valhalla is the best all-round choice — it supports isochrones, route matrices, and turn-by-turn routing. OSRM is lighter but cannot compute isochrones, so you would need to supply your own intersection polygon or pair it with another engine.

Valhalla (Recommended)

The easiest way to run Valhalla is with the GIS-OPS Docker image:

docker run -d --name valhalla \
  -p 8002:8002 \
  -e tile_urls=https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/great-britain-latest.osm.pbf \
  -v valhalla_data:/custom_files \
  ghcr.io/gis-ops/docker-valhalla/valhalla:latest

The first run downloads and builds routing tiles — this can take 10–60 minutes depending on the region size. Subsequent starts are fast.

Use in rendezvous-kit:

import { ValhallaEngine } from 'rendezvous-kit/engines/valhalla'

const engine = new ValhallaEngine({ baseUrl: 'http://localhost:8002' })

Choosing a Region

Download .osm.pbf extracts from Geofabrik. Smaller regions use less RAM and build faster:

• great-britain-latest.osm.pbf — ~1.2 GB, builds in ~15 min, ~4 GB RAM
• europe-latest.osm.pbf — ~28 GB, builds in hours, ~16 GB RAM
• Country-level extracts are a good compromise

Multiple Regions

To cover multiple non-contiguous regions, download separate extracts and merge them with Osmium:

osmium merge england.osm.pbf scotland.osm.pbf wales.osm.pbf -o gb.osm.pbf

OSRM

OSRM is fast and lightweight but only supports route matrices — no isochrones.

# Download and prepare data
wget https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/great-britain-latest.osm.pbf
docker run -t -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend osrm-extract -p /opt/car.lua /data/great-britain-latest.osm.pbf
docker run -t -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend osrm-partition /data/great-britain-latest.osrm
docker run -t -v $(pwd):/data osrm/osrm-backend osrm-customize /data/great-britain-latest.osrm

# Run the server
docker run -d --name osrm \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -v $(pwd):/data \
  osrm/osrm-backend osrm-routed --algorithm mld /data/great-britain-latest.osrm

Use in rendezvous-kit:

import { OsrmEngine } from 'rendezvous-kit/engines/osrm'

const engine = new OsrmEngine({ baseUrl: 'http://localhost:5000' })
// Note: OSRM cannot compute isochrones — findRendezvous will throw.
// Use OSRM for computeRouteMatrix only.

GraphHopper

GraphHopper supports isochrones and route matrices. The open-source version is free to self-host.

docker run -d --name graphhopper \
  -p 8989:8989 \
  -e JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx4g" \
  -v graphhopper_data:/data \
  graphhopper/graphhopper:latest \
  --url https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/great-britain-latest.osm.pbf \
  --host 0.0.0.0

Use in rendezvous-kit:

import { GraphHopperEngine } from 'rendezvous-kit/engines/graphhopper'

const engine = new GraphHopperEngine({ baseUrl: 'http://localhost:8989' })

Cloud-Hosted Alternatives

If you prefer not to self-host:

• OpenRouteService — free API key from openrouteservice.org, rate-limited (40 requests/min on free tier)
• Trotters Routing — https://routing.trotters.cc, L402-gated (pay-per-request with Lightning)

import { OpenRouteServiceEngine } from 'rendezvous-kit/engines/openrouteservice'

const engine = new OpenRouteServiceEngine({ apiKey: 'your-api-key' })

Tips

• Start with a small region while developing — city or country level. You can always upgrade later.
• Pin the PBF date in production so tile rebuilds are reproducible.
• Monitor memory — routing engines are memory-hungry. Valhalla with GB data uses ~4 GB RAM.
• Health checks — all engines respond to GET / or similar. Add a health check to your Docker Compose or Kubernetes config.