MBTiles
MBTiles is a file format for storing tilesets. It's designed to allow you to package up many files into a single tileset. For example, mapbox.mapbox-streets-v8 is a single tileset that contains administrative boundaries, road networks, POIs, and other kinds of geospatial information from many different data sources.
MBTiles is an open specification based on the SQLite database. MBTiles can contain raster or vector tilesets.
There are two ways to display MBTiles; you may upload them directly to Mapbox Studio via the Mapbox Studio tilesets page, or you may upload them using the Mapbox Uploads API. Once they have been uploaded, you can either add them to a style or request them directly using Mapbox GL JS or one of the Mapbox mobile SDKs. Note that the mobile SDKs do not support offline use of MBTiles directly. MBTiles can be used offline if they are part of a published Mapbox style. You can find more details on supported offline storage formats for mobile map resources in the offline maps guide.
You can create standalone MBTiles using tools such as QGIS or your favorite GIS software.
Related resources:
- MBTiles specification
- Studio Manual geospatial data page: transfer limits for uploading MBTiles files as tilesets
- Example MBTiles file: