Spent five minutes pacing a train station looking for a toilet that turns out to be locked, coin-operated, or simply non-existent? That experience, frustrating and sometimes genuinely urgent, is universal. But it does not have to be. A small number of cities around the world have figured out how to do public toilets properly - and the gap between top and bottom is enormous.
We pulled data from OpenStreetMap, the National Public Toilet Map (Australia), the Great British Public Toilet Map, and city authority open datasets for 140 cities across 68 countries. The ranking factors: density (toilets per square kilometre in built-up areas), free access proportion, wheelchair compliance, reported cleanliness (from user reviews), and 24-hour availability.
1. Tokyo, Japan - The undisputed standard
No other city comes close. Tokyo operates more than 12,000 public toilet facilities - and almost all of them are free, spotlessly clean, and stocked. The Japanese concept of omotenashi (hospitality as a default, not a reward) runs through every detail: heated seats, bidets, background music in women's cubicles to mask sound, and fresh flowers changed regularly near entrances.
The 2020 Olympics left a permanent legacy in the form of the Tokyo Toilet Project, a collaboration between the Nippon Foundation and Shibuya Ward. Sixteen architects - including Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and Shigeru Ban - each designed one public toilet in Shibuya. The Fumihiko Maki installation in Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park uses frosted glass that appears transparent when unoccupied and opaque instantly when locked, solving the universal anxiety: is anyone inside?
Japan's convenience stores (コンビニ) deserve separate mention: all 55,000+ 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson stores provide free toilet access with no purchase required. This invisible nationwide safety net means that in any Japanese town, you are never more than a few hundred metres from a clean, unlocked facility.
2. Singapore - Engineering for efficiency
Singapore has 3,200 public toilet facilities across 728 square kilometres, a density that other south-east Asian cities can only aspire to. More impressive is the enforcement: the National Environment Agency (NEA) conducts quarterly inspections of all public toilets and publishes results online. Failing a cleanliness check brings a fine; repeat failure brings prosecution.
The result is a toilet culture where attendants are not unusual, facilities are consistently stocked, and the average time between cleaning rounds is under two hours. During major events like Formula 1 or the Singapore Airshow, mobile toilet units are deployed in advance, not as an afterthought.
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands - Urinals and pragmatism
Amsterdam gets credit for being honest about the problem no other European city discusses openly: men urinating outdoors at night. The city's network of urilift retractable underground urinals - which rise from the pavement at dusk - has significantly reduced the public urination problem in the centre while keeping streets clear during the day.
For indoor facilities, Amsterdam's public toilet network is dense and well-maintained, with a strong community-reporting culture via the city's own app. Free access is standard in parks; station facilities charge €0.70 but stay clean through the charge. The GVB transit authority provides free toilet access at all metro stations with a valid OV-chipkaart.
4. Zurich, Switzerland - Quiet excellence
Zurich's public toilets are a perfect Swiss metaphor: unmarked, efficient, clean, and exactly where they should be. The city's "stille Örtchen" (quiet little places) programme funded a network of 70+ standalone facilities in 2018, all with 24-hour access. They clean on a time-based rotation - every four hours during the day, every six at night - and maintenance response time for a reported fault is under three hours.
5. Copenhagen, Denmark - Combining cycling infrastructure with amenity
Copenhagen's urban planning considers cyclists as primary users, and toilet infrastructure follows the same logic: facilities are positioned along major cycling routes as well as pedestrian zones. The city has invested in what it calls "hygienic infrastructure" as part of its UN 2030 wellbeing index, treating public toilet provision as a health right, not just a convenience.
6–10. The rest of the top ten
The second half of our top ten features cities that score well on at least two of the five criteria:
- Stockholm - excellent accessibility compliance (97% of all facilities meet Swedish standard SS 914221)
- Seoul - extraordinary density near tourist sites, free access, 24-hour availability near all major stations
- Vienna - the famous WienXtra network of artist-designed public toilets, all free and GPS-mapped
- Sydney - Australia's government-backed National Public Toilet Map keeps over 19,000 facilities verified
- Helsinki - quiet achiever with 98% of facilities rated "satisfactory" or above in the city's own index
What the worst-performing cities share
The lowest-ranked cities - across several continents - share three characteristics: no systematic mapping of facilities, no minimum cleanliness standard enforced by authority, and a cultural assumption that finding a toilet is "the individual's problem." Some cities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have improving coverage, driven by WHO-backed WASH programmes, but urban density and maintenance funding remain the bottleneck.
Interestingly, cost is not the primary factor in quality. Free cities like Tokyo outperform paid cities like Rome and New York. What matters is infrastructure investment, maintenance accountability, and - critically - a political willingness to treat access to a clean toilet as a basic right.
What your city can do right now
Every city on this list has one thing the worst cities do not: a public, searchable dataset of toilet locations. Singapore publishes theirs through data.gov.sg. Australia's is at toiletmap.gov.au. London uses the Great British Public Toilet Map. This transparency does not just help residents - it creates accountability. When a facility appears on a public map, there is political pressure to maintain it.
If your city is not on this list yet, the first step is mapping what exists. That is exactly what ToiletNearest.com does through OpenStreetMap integration - bringing every tagged public facility into a single searchable interface, free, global, and always updated.