Data Workbench
- Upload and edit custom geospatial data
- Configure MTS recipes to control how source data becomes a tileset
- Publish vector tilesets with the Mapbox Tiling Service
- Manage custom tilesets, datasets, and read-only tilesets
The Data Workbench allows you to upload custom data, edit it, and publish it with the Mapbox Tiling Service (MTS). Publishing with MTS gives you control over how your source data is transformed into vector tilesets using MTS recipes, and the Data Workbench provides an easy-to-use interface to configure MTS recipes before publishing.
What is a tileset?
A tileset is a collection of raster or vector data broken up into a uniform grid of square tiles at up to 22 preset zoom levels. Tilesets are the primary data format for Mapbox maps because they are highly cacheable and load quickly. Mapbox serves most maps as tilesets to keep our system fast and efficient.
When you upload your custom data to the Mapbox Console, it is stored as source data. You can then configure a recipe that defines how your data is processed into a tileset so it can be added to a Mapbox map.
Exceptions to this workflow are raster data, shapefiles, and MBTiles. These are directly published as a tileset when they are uploaded in the Mapbox Console.
Upload your data
To get started with the Data Workbench, you will need to start with uploading your data:
- Open the Data Workbench tab
- Click the Upload button.
- Click the Select files button or drag-and-drop files into this modal.
For a list of supported file types and transfer limits, see the list of supported file types.
After uploading your file(s), click into the project to view it inside the Data Workbench. Here, you'll see a preview of your data on the map and in a table view.
Now that your data has uploaded, you will be able to edit or publish your data.
For a smooth upload process, make sure that:
- Geospatial data is in the WGS84 coordinate system.
- GeoJSON files have been validated for proper syntax.
- Unnecessary properties have been removed.
Edit your data
After you have uploaded your data, you can go into the Data Workbench to edit your data. The following operations are available to edit the features or their properties:
- Add points, lines, or polygons to the map
- Edit feature properties in the table
- Update the position (latitude and longitude) of individual or multiple features
- Remove individual features or features in bulk
- Change the shape of a geometry with the following operations: union, subtract, intersect, and exclude
- Scale features
In the table view, you can also filter your data by keyword and update properties for individual or multiple features in your dataset.
Publish your data
Once you're satisfied with your source data, click on Publish to move to the next stage of the publish process. In this stage, you can define the logic for how your source data is transformed into a tileset using an MTS recipe. With MTS recipes, you can turn gigabytes of raw geospatial data into kilobytes, which can be critical for complex data visualizations.
Here are examples of what MTS recipes can enable for you:
- Simplify geometries at lower zooms so that your tiles are only as small as needed for efficient loading.
- Define hierarchy of features per zoom level
- Union features based on shared attributes to optimize tileset size
Browse the MTS examples page for more recipe configurations.
Style your data
Once your tileset is published, you can add it to a new or existing style by doing the following:
- From the Mapbox Studio page, create a new style or open an existing one, then click the + button to add a new custom layer.
- From the Source dropdown, choose the tileset you created. You can filter this list by name. You can also click Add tileset by ID.
- Click on the Style tab to start styling your data.
Manage tilesets
You can access all custom data you bring into the Mapbox Console from the Data Workbench tab. Each item displays a tag based on when you created it or which tool you used.
| Tag | What the tag means |
|---|---|
| No tag | Data is managed in the Data Workbench. All data uploaded into the Console after June 1, 2026 are editable in the Data Workbench except for raster files, Shapefiles, and MBTiles. |
Read-only tileset | Data is available as a read-only tileset. This could happen if the tileset was published outside the Console using the APIs directly, if the data was uploaded into the Console before June 1, 2026, or if the data is in Shapefile, MBTiles or raster format. |
Legacy dataset | Data was created with the Dataset Editor |
On the Data Workbench page, you can also access tilesets provided by Mapbox by choosing Mapbox tilesets from the Browse dropdown. The available tilesets provided by Mapbox are as follows:
Menu items
For items listed on the Data Workbench page, click the button for more options. The options that are available depend on what tag is displayed for each item.
| Tag | Star | Delete | Duplicate | Make public | Replace |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Read-only tileset | |||||
| No tag |
For items with the Legacy dataset tag, view the available options on the Legacy Datasets page.
Star
You can favorite your tilesets and have them appear in the Home tab of the Mapbox Console.
Delete
You can permanently delete datasets or tilesets from your account at any time. Deleted items cannot be recovered.
Make public or private
Choose whether a read-only tileset should be private or public. If a tileset is public, the tileset ID can be used by any Mapbox user with their access tokens. But, only the owner of a tileset can make changes or delete a tileset, even if it's public. If a tileset is private, the tileset ID can only be used with an access token from the owner's account. By default, new tilesets created in Mapbox Studio are private.
Replace
Replace the current data in your tileset with new data. The tileset ID will stay the same and the new data will be reflected in all styles that reference this tileset.
Tileset ID
From this menu, you can also copy the tileset ID to be used with Mapbox SDKs and APIs.
Pricing
Tilesets published with the Data Workbench use the Mapbox Tiling Service (MTS) which is billed by input file size and compute units (CU). The monthly free tier for MTS is 10 GB and 20 CUs, and most vector uploads typically range between 0.3 and 5 CU.
Read more about MTS pricing on the Mapbox pricing page.
Supported file types and transfer limits
Data that is uploaded into the Mapbox Console are either processed using the Uploads API or Mapbox Tiling Service depending on the file type and are subject to different monthly free limits.
| File type | Size limit | Processing service | Monthly free limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSV | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing. |
| FlatGeobuf | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| GeoJSON | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| GPX | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| KML | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| Line-delimited GeoJSON | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| TSV | 300 MB | Mapbox Tiling Service | 20 Compute Units, 10 GB. View detailed pricing |
| GeoTIFF | 300 MB | Uploads API | 20 uploads per month |
| MBTiles | 300 MB | Uploads API | 20 uploads per month |
| Shapefile | 300 MB | Uploads API | 20 uploads per month |
Viewing read-only tilesets
Items with the Read-only tileset tag open in the Tileset Explorer. See Read-only tilesets for details on the available views and tools.
Troubleshooting common errors
Having trouble with uploads? Try our Uploads troubleshooting guide.