Practical guide

How to find a table in the sun right now

You are outside, it is a decent day, and you want a beer in the sun — not in the shadow of the office block across the street. This is the workflow people actually use in SunMap, plus honest answers to the questions we get asked most.

The workflow, step by step

1. Open the map in your city

   SunMap opens on the city you are in. If you are planning somewhere else, pick the city from the menu at the top left — Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Lisbon, Porto, Rome, Florence, Venice, Nice, Athens, Palma, Split, Dubrovnik, New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Singapore and Tokyo.

2. Check the clock is on live time

   The clock pill shows the current local time in that city. Green markers have sun on their outdoor seating at that moment; dark markers are in shade. The shade comes from the actual buildings around the seating, not from a general sunrise/sunset time — which is why the bar on the north side of a narrow street is dark while the one 50 metres away is glowing.

3. Turn on “sun only”

   The sun filter removes everything that is currently shaded, so the map only shows places worth walking to. Combine it with the search and category filters if you specifically want a bar, a café or somewhere to eat.

4. Drag the time slider to your arrival time

   This is the step most people skip and then regret. Sun on a terrace can disappear in twenty minutes when a tall building is in the way. Drag the slider to 18:00 or 19:00 — whenever you will actually be sitting down — and see which places are still green.

5. Open the place and read its sun hours

   Tap a marker. The card shows an hour-by-hour sun timeline for that specific outdoor seating, so you can see when the sun arrives and when it leaves the tables. In Oslo the card also shows beer prices and happy-hour information where we have it.

6. Check the clouds before you commit

   Geometry says the sun can reach the tables; weather decides whether it does. Turn the weather layer on for live cloud cover, rain and temperature for that neighbourhood, not just a single number for the whole city.

7. Planning a later day? Use the date control

   Pick a date and hour to check whether a place will have sun on Saturday at 16:00 before you book. Sun geometry is exact for any future date; the cloud forecast is only useful for the next few days.

Questions we actually get

Where is there sun right now near me?

Allow location, and the map centres on you with the sunny places around you highlighted at the current time. You can also just pan the map — nothing is hidden behind an account.

How long will the sun stay on this terrace?

Open the place and read its sun timeline: it lists the hours when the sun reaches that seating today. An hour counts as sunny if the sun is on the seating during that hour, so a shoulder hour where the sun arrives at 18:20 still shows up.

Why does one side of the street show sun and the other not?

Because that is what the buildings do. We model the height and shape of the surrounding buildings and cast the real sun angle onto the seating position, which at northern latitudes decides almost everything from mid-afternoon onwards.

Do you know where the outdoor tables actually are?

For the places in the app, yes — the sun is calculated at the seating position (the pavement terrace, the courtyard, the quayside), not at the front door or the middle of the building.

Is every bar in my city in the app?

No. Places are added city by city and only when we can verify that they have outdoor seating. If your local favourite is missing, that is a gap in our coverage, not a claim that it has no sun.

Does it work in winter, and after sunset?

Yes, and it is arguably more useful then, because the few sunny spots are much rarer. After sunset nothing is sunny — use the slider or the date control to plan tomorrow instead.

Is it free? Do I need an account?

The map is free to use in the browser and there is no sign-up.

Does it work on my phone?

It runs in the mobile browser, and there is a native iOS build with location and compass follow.

Where this guide will not help you

If you want a table indoors, a restaurant booking engine, a review site, or a full directory of every bar in town, SunMap is the wrong tool — use a booking or review app for that. If you need sun and shade for a building plot, a balcony or a photo shoot rather than for a place to sit and drink, a dedicated shadow-simulation tool is a better fit. We say who those are on our alternatives page.

Open the sun map