Community topos vs Verified topos — what's the difference?

Written By Hanna Vartia

Last updated About 5 hours ago

There are two types of topos on 27 Crags: Community Topos (previously known as Free topos) and Verified Topos (previously known as Premium topos). Here's how they compare — both for climbers using them and for the authors who create them.

For climbers

	Community Topos	Verified Topos
Access	Free to use	Requires a Premium subscription
Quality control	None — content often incomplete or wrong	Reviewed by the 27 Crags team for accuracy and completeness.
Created by	Anyone	Local climbers, bolters and climbing enthusiasts

For topo authors — the key differences

	Community Topos	Verified Topos
Cost to publish	Requires a Premium subscription	Free to publish — no subscription needed
Ownership	None — it's a community contribution	Full — you retain ownership of your material
Created by	Anyone	Local climbers, bolters and climbing enthusiasts
Maintainership	Temporary — anyone can edit or remove content, or use the added material to create a Premium topo	Permanent — your team has full control
Editing by others	Anyone can edit and delete directly	Others can only submit suggestions, which your team approves or rejects

Why does publishing a community topo require a Premium subscription? Because community topos have no quality control or moderation, a Premium subscription acts as a barrier against spam and low-quality content.

Important: community topo content and Premium publishing

Because community topos are contributions, anyone can take the community topo content and publish it as a Premium topo. However:

Community content (nowadays called as contributions) added after September 2025 can be used freely by anyone for a Premium topo — no permission needed from the original contributor
Community content added before September 2025 (before the new app and the change) requires explicit approval from the original author before it can be used in a Verified topo

The original contributor does not receive any income if their community content is later used in a Verified Topo.

Which should you choose?

If you want to earn income, retain ownership and stay in control of your topo — publish as Verified Topo. If you simply want to contribute information to the climbing community without maintaining it, a Community Topo is the right choice.