Tilesets
- A broad collection of natural, built, and place data
- Country polygons with ISO 3166 country code IDs
- Global composite imagery layer
- Global elevation data
- Constantly updating traffic data
Mapbox tilesets are tilesets that are available for developers to use in web and mobile applications, maps, and styles.
Mapbox offers both raster and vector tilesets containing a wide variety of data, including road networks, place names, points of interest, satellite and aerial imagery, elevation data, live traffic data, expertly curated national borders, transit data, and more. The data in these tilesets is suitable for a wide variety of applications, both visual and analytical.
You can use Mapbox tilesets to:
- Add a satellite layer to an existing map
- Find elevation data for a specific location
- Generate a 3D terrain mesh for a video game
- Style terrain slope and hillshades in a map
- Add sources for map styles
This documentation includes guides with information about tileset formats and standards, guidance for accessing elevation data, and background information about data processing.
It also includes tileset reference documentation to help you use the data from each tileset. Reference documents include information about each tileset's layers, data sources, data coverage, and more.
Tileset formats
Raster tilesets store map data as a collection of images at various zoom levels that make up a complete map. Some raster tilesets like Mapbox Satellite contain visual imagery, while others like Mapbox Terrain-DEM include global elevation data encoded in raster format for digital cartographic purposes.
You can decode RGB-encoded elevation data by following our Access elevation data guide.
Vector tilesets store map data as geometries (like points, lines, and polygons) and metadata (like place names, elevation values, and building numbers) in vector tile format. Vector tiles do not have any inherent style properties. They are rendered only when requested by a client, and require a style to be rendered.
You can manipulate or query vector tiles directly to create interactive experiences with Mapbox GL JS and the Mapbox Maps SDKs for Android and iOS.
Tilesets in Mapbox styles
Mapbox tilesets contain all the map data that appears in Mapbox default styles.
- Mapbox Satellite is a data source for the Mapbox Satellite style.
- Mapbox Streets is a data source for the Mapbox Streets style.
- The Mapbox Satellite Streets style uses both Mapbox Satellite and Mapbox Streets tilesets.
- Styles may use any combination of Mapbox-provided or custom tilesets.
Developers can access tileset data in styles using the Styles API.
Other ways to access tileset data
To learn about other ways to access tileset data, see the documentation for our Raster Tiles API, Vector Tiles API, or Tilequery API.
Premium tilesets
For more information about our expertly-curated collection of global administrative, legislative, local, postal, and statistical boundaries, see our documentation for Mapbox Boundaries.
Custom tilesets
To learn how to create your own custom tilesets, see the documentation for our Mapbox Tiling Service, Mapbox Studio, and Uploads API. Make sure you convert your imagery into GeoTIFF format before you upload.