Drinking water fountains in Paris

Open the free Fontavio app and tap Closest: it points a compass needle at the nearest one, with a distance and a walking estimate, and hands the location to the maps app on your phone when you want directions.

Nearly all of them. Price is shown per place, so you can check before you rely on one, since a handful of fill-up points do charge.

The app checks opening hours and seasonal dates against your phone’s clock, and there is an open now filter. A place with no hours on record shows hours unknown, which for an outdoor tap usually means there is nothing to close.

Some of them. A fountain built for drinking from directly is often awkward for anything bigger, while a fill-up tap is meant for a bottle, a jerrycan or a tank. The listing says which kind a place is, and campervan and boat fill-up points are on the same map.

Treat the list as a good starting point, not a guarantee. A place shows a drinking water badge when the source data or a contributor said it is fit to drink; nobody inspects these taps for us and none of this water is lab-tested. Check the spout and let the water run clear before you fill a bottle.

Many outdoor taps and fountains in colder places are shut off over winter and turned back on in spring. Where a place has known seasonal dates or opening hours, its listing shows them, so a fountain that is off until April says so instead of sending you across town.

Yes, and they are some of the least documented water in any city. A cemetery or allotment tap is often the only free water in a residential district, and it appears here once somebody adds it.

A contributor confirmed recently that the place still matches what is listed. Unverified means nobody has yet, and might be outdated means it has been long enough to be worth a second look. The badge moves whenever somebody in Paris confirms a tap, which is a single tap in the app.

No map of a city is ever finished. New taps get added and old ones get confirmed as people use them, and a thin area fills in fastest when somebody who lives there starts adding what they walk past.

Report the one that moved from the app, and add the missing one yourself: only the location and the category are required, and anyone can fill in the rest later. A person reviews what you send, and water-safety reports are looked at first.

Yes. France's health ministry calls tap water the most closely monitored food in the country, and WHO and UNICEF put safely managed drinking water at 99.7% for 2024. Figures, sources and the dates they were checked: https://fontavio.com/france/tap-water/

Not necessarily. A fountain in a village square may be decorative, or fed by its own spring. The sign tells you which: eau potable is drinking water, and eau non potable means it isn't safe to drink. No sign at all doesn't mean it has been tested. Stick to fountains marked eau potable and check the spout before filling up. When you find one, add it to Fontavio or review it and mention the sign; it helps walkers and cyclists plan their route.