Leaflet vs Mapbox vs OpenLayers

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Leaflet

1.4K
1K
+ 1
107
Mapbox

767
909
+ 1
112
OpenLayers

630
442
+ 1
56
Advice on Leaflet, Mapbox, and OpenLayers

From a StackShare Community member: "We're a team of two starting to write a mobile app. The app will heavily rely on maps and this is where my partner and I are not seeing eye-to-eye. I would like to go with an open source solution like OpenStreetMap that is used by Apple & Foursquare. He would like to go with Google Maps since more apps use it and has better support (according to him). Mapbox is also an option but I don’t know much about it."

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Replies (6)
Recommends
on
OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap

I use OpenStreetMap because that has a strong community. It takes some time to catch up with Google Maps, but OpenStreetMap will become great solution.

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Blair Gemmer
Software Engineer at VYNYL · | 2 upvotes · 145.4K views
Recommends
on
Google MapsGoogle Maps

Google Maps is best because it is practically free (they give you $300 in free credits per month and it's really hard to go over the free tier unless you really mean business) and it's the best!

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Recommends
on
MapboxMapbox

I use Mapbox because We need 3D maps and navigation, it has a great plugin for React and React Native which we use. Also the Mapbox Geocoder is great.

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Shuuji TAKAHASHI
Recommends
on
Google MapsGoogle Maps

I use Google Maps because it has a lot of great features such as Google's rich APIs, geolocation functions, navigation search feature, street map view, auto-generated 3D city map.

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Recommends
on
OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap

Its open source and we use it.

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Fabio Fraga Machado
Recommends
on
OpenStreetMapOpenStreetMap

I use OpenStreetMap because i have the control of the environment, using Docker containers or bare-metal servers.

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Pros of Leaflet
Pros of Mapbox
Pros of OpenLayers
  • 32
    Light weight
  • 28
    Free
  • 12
    Evolutive via plugins
  • 10
    OpenStreetMap
  • 9
    Strong community
  • 7
    Choice of map providers
  • 6
    Easy API
  • 3
    Alternative to Google Maps
  • 28
    Best mapping service outside of Google Maps
  • 22
    OpenStreetMap
  • 15
    Beautifully vectorable
  • 11
    Fluid user experience
  • 8
    Extensible
  • 7
    React/ RNative integration
  • 5
    3D Layers
  • 4
    Low Level API
  • 4
    Affordable
  • 3
    Great customer support
  • 3
    Custom themes
  • 2
    High data volume rendering
  • 14
    Flexibility
  • 11
    Maturity
  • 8
    Open Source
  • 7
    Incredibly comprehensive, excellent support
  • 4
    Extensible
  • 4
    Strong community
  • 4
    Choice of map providers
  • 3
    Low Level API
  • 1
    OpenStreetMap

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What is Leaflet?

Leaflet is an open source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. It is developed by Vladimir Agafonkin of MapBox with a team of dedicated contributors. Weighing just about 30 KB of gzipped JS code, it has all the features most developers ever need for online maps.

What is Mapbox?

We make it possible to pin travel spots on Pinterest, find restaurants on Foursquare, and visualize data on GitHub.

What is OpenLayers?

An opensource javascript library to load, display and render maps from multiple sources on web pages.

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What companies use Leaflet?
What companies use Mapbox?
What companies use OpenLayers?

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What tools integrate with Leaflet?
What tools integrate with Mapbox?
What tools integrate with OpenLayers?

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What are some alternatives to Leaflet, Mapbox, and OpenLayers?
Google Maps
Create rich applications and stunning visualisations of your data, leveraging the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of Google Maps and a modern web platform that scales as you grow.
OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
Leaf
Leaf is a Machine Intelligence Framework engineered by software developers, not scientists. It was inspired by the brilliant people behind TensorFlow, Torch, Caffe, Rust and numerous research papers and brings modularity, performance and portability to deep learning. Leaf is lean and tries to introduce minimal technical debt to your stack.
D3.js
It is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Emphasises on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework.
ArcGIS
It is a geographic information system for working with maps and geographic information. It is used for creating and using maps, compiling geographic data, analyzing mapped information, sharing and much more.
See all alternatives