Reference

The Mapbox Boundaries vector tiles only contain a minimal set of feature properties, which keeps them small and performant. Additional data such as names, hierarchy information, and official reference codes are provided in offline lookup tables that can be joined and referenced as needed.

Geometry types

Each individual Boundaries tileset will contain one of three geometry types:

Polygons represent the area covered by a boundary and can be used for choropleth visualizations, pattern fills, or hover and click interactions.

Lines represent the edge between two boundaries and allow for clean dashed line styles and special display of disputed boundaries.

Points represent a central location within each boundary and can be used for labeling or symbolic data visualizations.

Boundaries tileset IDs

Mapbox Boundaries is composed of 29 separate tilesets, each with their own tileset ID. Each individual tileset is commonly referred to as a layer. Each tileset contains global data for that specific boundary type and level combination. For example, the administrative level 2 tileset will contain both US counties and Chinese prefectures.

For each data type, the hierarchy is designed such that levels with the lowest numbers generally contain the polygons with the largest areas and levels with the highest numbers contain the polygons with the smallest areas.

If you want to visualize any of the tilesets, layers, or worldviews to better understand the data type and level mapping for a country, see our coverage explorer map.

Some other notes about tileset hierarchy:

• Administrative levels are anchored to the a0 layer, which contains the top-level polygon of each area that contains an ISO 3166-1 code.
• Postal levels are anchored on the p4 level, which is defined as "Full-detail" or "The standard required number of digits to send mail".