GBIF Nearby

See which species have been recorded around you. Browse a live map, a ranked species list, a photo gallery, and the GBIF datasets behind the records.

Discover the biodiversity around you.

GBIF Nearby turns your phone into a window onto the species that have been recorded near your current location. Whether you're on a hike, in your backyard, or visiting somewhere new, the app shows what wildlife scientists, museums, and citizen observers have documented in the area — drawn live from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the world's largest open database of biodiversity records with over 3 billion occurrences.

Five ways to explore

• Map — A density heatmap of occurrence records around you, with tappable pins at close zoom that open the underlying record. • Species — A ranked list of the species recorded nearby, with record counts and photos where available. • Gallery — A scrolling photo grid of recent occurrences in your area. • Datasets — The GBIF datasets contributing data near you, with one tap to learn about each source. • About — What the app does, what GBIF is, and your settings.

Adjustable to your interest

A persistent header lets you change the search radius from 100 meters to 100 kilometers, and filter to All life, Animals, Plants, or Fungi. Choose your distance unit (metric or imperial) and the language used for common names.

Built for curiosity

GBIF Nearby is an educational, non-commercial app aimed at students, naturalists, hikers, teachers, and anyone curious about the living world around them. It is a doorway into open biodiversity data — every record links back to its source on GBIF, so you can dig deeper, cite responsibly, or contribute back to the dataset that produced it.

Privacy-respecting

The app uses your location only to query GBIF for nearby records. No accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no advertising. Your location never leaves your device except as part of the GBIF query itself.

Data source

All biodiversity data comes from the public GBIF API. GBIF is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments, providing free and open access to biodiversity data. Learn more at gbif.org.