Alternatives to Leaflet logo

Alternatives to Leaflet

OpenLayers, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, and Leaf are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Leaflet.
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What is Leaflet and what are its top alternatives?

Leaflet is a popular open-source JavaScript library used for interactive maps. It is lightweight, easy to use, and customizable. One of its key features is its simplicity, allowing users to easily add maps to their websites with minimal effort. However, Leaflet does have limitations in terms of limited functionality compared to other mapping libraries.

  1. Mapbox: Mapbox is an alternative to Leaflet that offers advanced mapping capabilities, including 3D maps and custom styling. It provides powerful data visualization tools and extensive APIs. However, Mapbox can be more complex and resource-intensive compared to Leaflet.
  2. OpenLayers: OpenLayers is a feature-rich mapping library that supports a wide range of map projections and formats. It offers extensive functionality for interactive mapping applications. However, OpenLayers can have a steeper learning curve compared to Leaflet.
  3. Google Maps API: Google Maps API provides comprehensive mapping services with features such as geocoding, routing, and street view. It offers integration with other Google services and has extensive documentation. However, using Google Maps API may incur usage fees for high volume usage.
  4. CesiumJS: CesiumJS is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes and maps. It supports WebGL for high-performance rendering and offers powerful visualization tools. However, CesiumJS may be more specialized for 3D mapping applications compared to Leaflet.
  5. Here Maps API: Here Maps API provides mapping services with features such as geocoding, routing, and traffic data. It offers SDKs for various platforms and extensive location-based services. However, Here Maps API may have limitations in terms of customization compared to Leaflet.
  6. Bing Maps API: Bing Maps API offers mapping services with features such as geocoding, routing, and imagery. It provides integration with Microsoft services and cross-platform support. However, Bing Maps API may have a smaller user base compared to Leaflet.
  7. ArcGIS API for JavaScript: ArcGIS API for JavaScript is a mapping library by Esri that offers advanced geospatial capabilities. It supports complex GIS functionalities and integration with ArcGIS platform. However, ArcGIS API for JavaScript may be more specialized for GIS applications compared to Leaflet.
  8. TomTom Maps API: TomTom Maps API provides mapping services with features such as geocoding, routing, and traffic data. It offers detailed mapping data and APIs for navigation services. However, TomTom Maps API may have limitations in terms of community support compared to Leaflet.
  9. GeoJSON: GeoJSON is a format for encoding a variety of geographic data structures. It is lightweight, easy to use, and interoperable with various mapping libraries. However, GeoJSON may have limitations in terms of visualization capabilities compared to Leaflet.
  10. Carto: Carto is a platform for spatial data analysis and visualization. It offers tools for creating interactive maps, dashboards, and spatial insights. However, Carto may be more focused on data analysis and visualization compared to Leaflet.

Top Alternatives to Leaflet

  • OpenLayers
    OpenLayers

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

  • Google Maps
    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

    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. ...

  • Mapbox
    Mapbox

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

  • Leaf
    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
    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
    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. ...

  • Cesium
    Cesium

    it is used to create the leading web-based globe and map for visualizing dynamic data. We strive for the best possible performance, precision, visual quality, ease of use, platform support, and content. ...

Leaflet alternatives & related posts

OpenLayers logo

OpenLayers

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A high-performance, feature-packed library for all your mapping needs
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PROS OF OPENLAYERS
  • 15
    Flexibility
  • 11
    Maturity
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    Open Source
  • 7
    Incredibly comprehensive, excellent support
  • 4
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    Strong community
  • 4
    Choice of map providers
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    Google Maps logo

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    Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery
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    Tom Klein

    Google Analytics is a great tool to analyze your traffic. To debug our software and ask questions, we love to use Postman and Stack Overflow. Google Drive helps our team to share documents. We're able to build our great products through the APIs by Google Maps, CloudFlare, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, Let's Encrypt, and TensorFlow.

    See more

    A huge component of our product relies on gathering public data about locations of interest. Google Places API gives us that ability in the most efficient way. Since we are primarily going to be using as google data as a source of information for our MVP, we might as well start integrating the Google Places API in our system. We have worked with Google Maps in the past and we might take some inspiration from our previous projects onto this one.

    See more
    OpenStreetMap logo

    OpenStreetMap

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    The free editable map of the whole world
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    PROS OF OPENSTREETMAP
    • 23
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    • 17
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      Adam Abdelmoula
      CPO at Split Mobile Software · | 6 upvotes · 484.7K views

      We need some advice about the map services provider. We are a mobility app that just launched 5 months ago in Tunisia offering P2P carpooling. We are currently using Google Maps API for maps (Places API, Geocoding API, Directions API & Distance Matrix API). Thus, we received expensive bills from Google Cloud following the number of requests we are using. We are looking forward to reduce the number of requests in general because we can't afford these large bills at this stage, knowing that they are going to increase proportionally to the active users of the app. We tried to optimize multiple times but it isn't enough. We are searching for optimization advice or ideas on how we use the APIs, or other map providers (like OpenStreetMap or similar) that offers free or cheaper options than Google Maps, without lacking quality of information (we are in Tunisia and we have to choose options that have enough data about Tunisia). Thanks!

      See more

      Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?

      Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?

      See more
      Mapbox logo

      Mapbox

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      933
      112
      Design and publish beautiful maps
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      PROS OF MAPBOX
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        Best mapping service outside of Google Maps
      • 22
        OpenStreetMap
      • 15
        Beautifully vectorable
      • 11
        Fluid user experience
      • 8
        Extensible
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        React/ RNative integration
      • 5
        3D Layers
      • 4
        Low Level API
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        Affordable
      • 3
        Great customer support
      • 3
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      • 2
        High data volume rendering
      CONS OF MAPBOX
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        related Mapbox posts

        Stephen Gheysens
        Lead Solutions Engineer at Inscribe · | 7 upvotes · 470.2K views

        Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").

        MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).

        I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:

        • Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.

        • Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.

        • At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.

        *You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.

        See more

        Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?

        Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?

        See more
        Leaf logo

        Leaf

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        0
        Machine learning framework in Rust
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            D3.js logo

            D3.js

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            If you've tried using D3.js, it's a pretty poor developer experience, and that translates to spending a bunch of time getting the graphs one wants even for things that are conceptually pretty basic. Plotly isn't amazing (it's decent), but it's way better than than D3 unless you have very specialized needs.

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            Amit Garg
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            Hi,

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            1. Amount of work needed for integration
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            ArcGIS logo

            ArcGIS

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            A geographic information system for working with maps
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              Stephen Gheysens
              Lead Solutions Engineer at Inscribe · | 7 upvotes · 470.2K views

              Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").

              MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).

              I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:

              • Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.

              • Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.

              • At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.

              *You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.

              See more
              Cesium logo

              Cesium

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              105
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              A javascript library to build 3D globes and 2D maps
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              CONS OF CESIUM
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