How we rank Play Places

Every list in our places directory is ordered by the same published rules. This page lists all of them, as required by EU Regulation 2019/1150 (platform-to-business fairness) and the EU Omnibus Directive.

1. Partners first, and always labelled

Venues in our free partner programme play our children's songs and send us a short, dated video as proof every few months. Active partners are listed first in their city, ordered by their programme points (earned for approved check-ins, lost for missed or rejected ones). Every partner carries a visible Partner label in lists, on the map and on its page. Nobody pays for this position today; if paid listings are ever offered, they will be labelled as such and described here before they start.

2. Then our score

Every other place gets a score out of about 90 points, from public data only:

What kind of place it is

Indoor play centre: 40 points
Trampoline park: 32 points
Kids' café: 30 points
Children's museum: 28 points
Kids' activity venue: 24 points
Playground: 10 points

Indoor play comes first because it is what most parents search for, and what works in any weather. Plus 6 points when the kind of place is stated explicitly on OpenStreetMap (for example leisure=indoor_play), rather than guessed by us from its name.

How much useful information is public

Has a website: 12 points
Publishes opening hours: 10 points
Publishes a phone number: 8 points
Has a street address: 4 points
Publishes an email address: 4 points
States the age range: 2 points
States wheelchair access: 1 point
Notable (has a Wikidata entry, or is a large mapped playground): 3 points

Distance

No penalty for the first 5 km from the city centre, then 0.4 points per km, at most 12 points. Ties go to the nearer place.

3. Which places are listed

We start with the capital of each of the 195 countries and keep the ten best-scoring places. If the capital has fewer than ten within 15 km of its centre, we look within 30 km, then 60 km, then across the rest of the country. Only one branch of a chain is shown before other venues get a turn. Duplicates (the same place mapped twice) are merged. Playgrounds are listed only when they have a proper name of their own. Schools, nurseries and day care, shops, clinics and children's homes are left out.

4. What we do not use

No Google ratings or reviews, and no data copied from Google Maps (we only link to a Google Maps search).
No payment, commission or other favour from a venue, apart from the partner programme described above.
No personal data about visitors.

5. Where the data comes from

Places, addresses, opening hours and tags: © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License (ODbL). Email addresses and phone numbers: the venue's own public website, read politely (we respect robots.txt and read at most three pages). City locations: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). We update the directory regularly; each page shows when it was last updated.

6. Corrections and complaints

If you run a listed place, you can claim its page, ask us to correct it or remove a contact detail, or join the partner programme, from the form on the place's page. You can also contact us. Anyone can correct the underlying data on OpenStreetMap.