Map data

Map data is the building material for a map. If this sounds unclear, see the beginner intro What a map consists of.

Types of map data

Map data comes in datasets of various types. There are these key types:

Tilesets

A tileset is a set of map tiles, which is map data cut into square tiles for fast and easy access. To learn more about how it works, see Tiles à la Google Maps.

Map tiles inside a tileset can be in different formats:

  • Raster tilesets contain map tiles in regular image formats (PNG, JPG, WEBP…). Raster tiles are the traditional format used to store satellite and aerial imagery.

  • Vector tilesets contain vector features. These represent objects on a map as geometric shapes – points, lines, and polygons. Vector tiles are more modern, lightweight, and can be styled on the fly. See Raster vs vector map tiles to learn more.

Vector data files

Vector data files contain vector features, just like vector tilesets. The difference is that a vector data file is not tiled. It’s a single file, usually in GeoJSON format. A vector data file needs to get tiled when it’s too big to be accessed as one object.

Other types

The mentioned dataset types (raster tilesets, vector tilesets, vector data files) are the most common, but there are other types as well, for example raster-DEM tilesets that contain various additional values (like elevation) encoded as standard RGB colors, or 3D quantized polygon mesh representing 3D terrain.

Usually, these special formats are already embedded in ready-made maps and you won’t need to work with them directly.

How to use map data

To make your final map, you’ll typically need:

  1. A ready-made MapTiler map as a base. All our maps contain up-to-date global map data of the right types, and you don’t need to do anything special to use them.

  2. Your own custom data that you want to add to the map. See 👉 how to add your own map data to learn all about how to prepare and integrate it.

  3. To build a specialized map, you may need to combine your selected MapTiler basemap with additional MapTiler data. See 👉 Map data by MapTiler to get more details about the individual tilesets we offer.

Both MapTiler data and your custom data can be also self-hosted. Check out MapTiler Server if you’re looking to host your map data on-prem.