Mapping libraries compared: Mapbox, Leaflet, and MapLibre

MapLibre is the right choice for most web mapping projects today. I landed on that conclusion after building Landbound, a trip planning tool for outdoor adventurers where the map is not a decorative element but the core of the entire interface. Getting the mapping library wrong would have been expensive to fix later, so I spent real time evaluating the options.

Here is how the three main contenders compare when you actually build something with them.

Leaflet: the reliable workhorse

Leaflet has been around since 2011. It is lightweight (around 40KB gzipped), battle-tested, and has a plugin ecosystem that covers almost every use case you can think of. If you need to drop markers on a map and call it a day, Leaflet will get you there with minimal friction.

The limitation is that Leaflet is built around raster tiles. It loads pre-rendered PNG images and stitches them together. This means no smooth zooming between levels, no rotating the map, no 3D terrain, and no client-side styling of map features. The map looks the same for everyone because the tiles were rendered on a server before your user ever loaded the page.

For simple use cases, that is fine. Plenty of websites just need a location pin and a zoom control. But if you want to style the map dynamically, highlight specific features, or give users a fluid, modern map experience, raster tiles hit a wall fast.

Bundle size is Leaflet's real advantage. If you are adding a small map to a content site and you care about keeping your JavaScript minimal, Leaflet is hard to beat. But for an application where the map is the product, you need vector tiles.

Mapbox GL JS: powerful but with strings attached

Mapbox GL JS introduced vector tile rendering to the browser and it was a genuine leap forward. Vector tiles send raw geometry data to the client, and the browser renders them using WebGL. This means smooth zooming, map rotation, 3D terrain, dynamic styling, and the ability to change how features look at runtime without fetching new tiles.

For Landbound, these capabilities matter. Users need to see trail data overlaid on terrain, toggle between different map styles, and interact with the map fluidly on both desktop and mobile. Raster tiles simply could not deliver that experience.

The problem with Mapbox is the licensing. In December 2020, Mapbox changed the license of Mapbox GL JS v2 from the BSD 3-Clause open-source license to a proprietary one. You now need a Mapbox access token to use it at all, and pricing scales with map loads. For a small project, the free tier is generous enough. But as your traffic grows, the costs grow with it, and you are locked into their ecosystem with no easy exit.

The SDK itself is excellent. Mapbox Studio for designing custom map styles is genuinely best-in-class tooling. But building a core product dependency on a proprietary library with usage-based pricing felt like a risk I did not want to take.

MapLibre GL JS: the open-source answer

When Mapbox changed their license, the community forked the last open-source version (v1.13) and created MapLibre GL JS. It is now a fully independent project under the MapLibre organization, with active development, regular releases, and a growing contributor base.

MapLibre gives you the same vector tile rendering, WebGL performance, smooth zooming, 3D terrain support, and dynamic styling that made Mapbox GL JS compelling. The API is almost identical to Mapbox GL JS, which means most Mapbox tutorials and examples work with minimal changes. Mapbox style specifications are compatible, so you can use styles designed for Mapbox with MapLibre directly.

The key difference is that there is no vendor lock-in. You bring your own tile source. You can use MapTiler (which offers a generous free tier and hosts OpenStreetMap-based tiles), you can self-host tiles with something like Martin or tileserver-gl, or you can use any other source that serves vector tiles in the MVT format. For Landbound, this flexibility was important. I did not want a single provider controlling both the rendering library and the tile data.

Performance-wise, MapLibre has kept pace with and in some areas surpassed the Mapbox fork. The community has added features like the globe view and continued optimizing the WebGL rendering pipeline. Bundle size is around 200KB gzipped, which is larger than Leaflet but comparable to Mapbox GL JS and reasonable for an application where the map is central.

Tile sources matter as much as the library

Choosing a rendering library is only half the decision. You also need tiles to render. OpenStreetMap is the foundation for most free and open tile sources, but raw OSM data needs to be processed into tiles before a browser can use it.

MapTiler is probably the easiest option for getting started with vector tiles. Their free tier covers most side projects and small applications, and their tiles are high quality. For production applications with higher traffic, the paid tiers are reasonable and still cheaper than equivalent Mapbox usage.

Self-hosting tiles is possible and I have experimented with it, but it is more operational overhead than most projects need. You are looking at processing planet-scale geodata, storing hundreds of gigabytes of tiles, and running a tile server that can handle concurrent requests with low latency. It makes sense for large-scale applications or privacy-sensitive use cases, but for most projects, a hosted tile provider is the pragmatic choice.

What I chose for Landbound

MapLibre GL JS with MapTiler as the primary tile source. The reasoning was straightforward: I needed vector tile rendering for the interactive map experience, I wanted to avoid vendor lock-in on a core dependency, and the open-source ecosystem gave me confidence that the library would continue to improve.

The migration path from Mapbox examples and documentation was smooth. Most code samples work by swapping mapboxgl for maplibregl and removing the access token requirement. The React wrapper react-map-gl supports both Mapbox and MapLibre, which made integration with the rest of the stack simple.

If you are starting a new project today that needs more than a basic pin-on-a-map, MapLibre is the safe bet. You get modern vector tile rendering without the licensing risk, a compatible ecosystem of styles and tools, and an active community that is not going anywhere.

Sources

• MapLibre GL JS
• Leaflet
• Mapbox GL JS
• MapTiler
• Mapbox GL JS license change discussion
• OpenStreetMap