Comparison
Finding a table in the sun has become a crowded little category. This page describes what the alternatives say about themselves on their own sites and app store pages, what SunMap does differently, and — importantly — the situations where you should use something else.
SunMap is a free map of bars, cafés and restaurants with verified outdoor seating in around 30 cities, showing which of them have sun on the tables right now and for how long. Shade is cast from real building geometry onto the seating position, and live neighbourhood weather is shown next to it. No account. See the workflow →
Most confusion in this space comes from mixing up two categories. Venue finders list actual bars and cafés and tell you which are sunny. Sun/shadow simulators show sunlight anywhere on Earth but do not know where the terraces are. If you want to decide where to drink, you want the first kind. If you want to evaluate an apartment, a plot or a photo location, you want the second.
All claims below are taken from each product's own website or App Store listing.
Its App Store listing says it "shows you which pubs, cafés, rooftops and restaurants have sunny outdoor seating — right now", using "building geometry and sun position data", and lists mapped terrace shapes with a percentage in sun, hourly sun exposure, weather factoring in temperature, wind and rain, notifications, and community terrace mapping. It names London, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, New York and Sydney and says it works worldwide, while its terms state the service is "primarily designed for users in the United Kingdom and European Union".
Honestly: this is the closest thing to SunMap, and its per-terrace polygon and percentage-in-sun model is more detailed than our per-seating-point model. If you want push notifications and community-drawn terraces, it likely suits you better than we do.
Its site says it "shows you exactly where sunlight hits, and where shadows fall", with real-time 3D building shadows, a time-travel slider, filters for cafés, restaurants, bakeries, breweries and wineries, full weather including UV, wind, humidity and a 7-day forecast, favourites, a home screen widget, and availability in 34 languages, rebuilt as a native iOS app on Apple Maps.
Honestly: if you want a polished native iOS app with a widget, a long-range forecast, and coverage in your own language, it is a strong choice. We do not have a widget.
Describes itself as "a map of restaurants and bars with outdoor seating" that shows "in real time exactly how long the sun hits each terrace", covering 39 cities across Europe with a Nordic centre of gravity. Its own about page explains that sun is computed from OpenStreetMap building data with results cached nightly, accounting for season, latitude and terrace-edge height, and it states plainly that calculations assume clear weather and that trees and awnings are not included.
Honestly: more Swedish cities than we have, and an unusually honest methodology page. Its sun results are pre-computed nightly for clear skies with weather shown as context; ours are computed live and shown alongside the current cloud cover.
"A guide for discovering sunny outdoor seating" that "uses the sun's position and the geometry of buildings to determine exactly where the sunshine lands", with a time picker to plan ahead. Free, iOS only, covering Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmö.
Honestly: in those three Swedish cities it is a focused, free, native option. It does not cover the rest of Europe.
"A 3D sun-tracking map that shows you which pub gardens are in sunlight right now — and when they will be later", free, using OpenStreetMap building data for shadows and pulling in every pub with outdoor seating from OpenStreetMap across the whole UK, with live cloud cover and UV from OpenWeatherMap.
Honestly: if you are in the UK and want maximum pub coverage, its pull-everything-from-OpenStreetMap approach beats our curated lists on breadth. We trade breadth for verified outdoor seating and checked seating positions.
SunOnTap presents "real-time sun and shade for cafes, bars and restaurants" with filters for cafés, bars and restaurants, an open-now filter, a sun chance value, and temperature, UV, wind and cloud percentage in the header, installable as a home-screen web app. Sunny Terrace Finder says it shows "which bars, restaurants, and cafes have sun on the terrace right now — based on your location and live weather", with a live sun score and a sun forecast for today, free and with no account, but requiring location access.
Honestly: both are free and quick. Neither documents its shade method in the detail SunSpotr or we do, so we cannot say how their numbers are produced — judge them on results in your own street.
A direct competitor in Oslo specifically. We could not retrieve verifiable feature claims from its own pages, so we make none here — try it side by side with us in Oslo and judge for yourself.
Its own listing says it "shows where the sun shines and where shadows fall – for any rooftop, street, or garden on Earth", simulated down to the minute from global building, tree and terrain data, aimed at "realtors, solar professionals, photographers, and anyone planning life around the sun", with a free tier and paid plans from €2.50 per month on annual billing up to studio and enterprise tiers, on web, iOS and Android; higher tiers add 14-day global weather and UV forecast plus historical data.
Honestly: for anything involving trees, terrain, rooftops, an apartment viewing or a professional deliverable, Shadowmap is a better tool than SunMap and we would use it ourselves. It does not tell you which bar to walk to.
Describes itself as "a global simulation of mountain, building and tree shadows for any date and time", calculated in real time from terrain elevation data and OpenStreetMap or custom buildings, free for personal use with paid API tiers for developers, and lists use cases from gardening and real estate to photography, event planning and research.
Honestly: the strongest choice when terrain and mountain shadows matter — valleys, hillsides, ski towns — and it has a developer API, which we do not offer.
SunCalc (suncalc.org / suncalc.net) is a free app that "shows sun movement and sunlight phases during the given day at the given location", with azimuth, altitude and shadow length on a map and a time slider. Sun Seeker is a paid iOS solar tracking and compass app with sun path, twilight, UV index, golden hour and a 3D augmented-reality view, and mentions campers and picnickers finding "where to camp, sit or pitch an umbrella". Sun Surveyor is a paid iOS and Android "Sun & Moon Guide" with live-camera AR, map and Street View, aimed at photographers, filmmakers, solar professionals, architects, estate agents and gardeners.
Honestly: these give you sun angles anywhere, including places no venue app covers, and Sun Seeker's AR view is genuinely useful when you are standing in the spot. None of them models the buildings around a specific terrace or knows which places have outdoor seating.
Google's own help pages describe outdoor seating as a business attribute owners can add to a Business Profile, shown on Search and Maps, and its Places API documentation lists service, food and drink, ambience and accessibility attributes. Nothing in Google's own documentation describes modelling sun position, shadows or shade for seating.
Honestly: Google Maps beats every app on this page for opening hours, reviews, photos, booking and walking directions. It can tell you a place has outdoor seating. It cannot tell you whether the sun is on it at 18:40.
| Tool | Lists bars/cafés with outdoor seating | Models building shade | Weather / clouds | Price as stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SunMap | Yes, verified, ~30 cities | Yes, at the seating position | Yes, live, neighbourhood level | Free, no account |
| SunSeekr | Yes | Yes, mapped terraces with % in sun | Yes | Free app |
| Coffee in the Sun | Yes | Yes, 3D buildings | Yes, incl. 7-day forecast | Not stated |
| SunSpotr | Yes, 39 cities | Yes, pre-computed nightly | Shown as context, not in the calc | Not stated |
| SolSipp | Yes, 3 Swedish cities | Yes | Not stated | Free, iOS |
| Pub Garden | Yes, UK-wide from OpenStreetMap | Yes | Yes, cloud cover and UV | Free |
| SunOnTap | Yes | Shows shadows on the map | Yes | Not stated |
| Sunny Terrace Finder | Yes | Not documented | Yes | Free |
| Shadowmap | No | Yes, buildings, trees, terrain | Yes, on higher tiers | Free tier, paid from €2.50/mo annually |
| ShadeMap | No | Yes, terrain and buildings | Not stated | Free personal use, paid API |
| SunCalc | No | No buildings | No | Free |
| Sun Seeker | No | No city-wide building model | UV index | Paid, one-time |
| Sun Surveyor | No | Shadow length, not city-wide | Not stated | Paid, free Lite version |
| Google Maps | Yes, as a yes/no attribute | No | Weather widget only | Free |
Competitor descriptions summarise what each product publishes about itself and were checked in September 2026. Products change; if we have described yours inaccurately, tell us and we will fix it.