Sun Trap: Pub Sun Finder

bytefern ltd

About this app

Suntrap finds UK pubs whose beer garden, terrace or pavement seating is actually in the sun right now — or whenever you're planning to head out.

For every pub we know about, Suntrap traces the outdoor space, then casts the sun against the surrounding buildings to work out how much of the seating is lit at this moment. No guesswork, no "south-facing" hand-waving — just a map of where the sun has actually landed.

Features
• A live map of pubs, each tinted by how sunny their outdoor space is right now.
• A sun-time slider — drag forward an hour or two to see where the light will be by the time you arrive.
• Tap a pub for opening hours, a photo of the outdoor area, and walking directions.
• Switch cities in a tap. Suntrap is live in 14 UK cities: London, Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
• Works offline-friendly: tiles cache as you pan, so the map keeps moving on patchy signal.
• No accounts, no tracking, no ads.

How it works
Suntrap combines OpenStreetMap pub and building data with first-principles solar geometry. For each pub we sample points across the outdoor seating polygon, raycast toward the sun, and check whether any nearby building is tall enough to block it. The lit fraction is weighted by sun altitude, so a bright noon sun counts for more than a low evening one.

Suntrap is independent. We start from OpenStreetMap data and then hand-trace the gardens and street seating that OSM doesn't cover yet — so if a garden is missing or wrong, tap "Send feedback" inside the app and we'll add it.

Terms of use: https://suntrap.app/terms