Maps · alternatives
Alternatives to Lonboard
22 maps tools sit alongside Lonboard in this directory. Below is what separates each from Lonboard on the figures we hold, price, model, tier count and rating, and a direct comparison for every one.
- Alternatives listed
- 22
- With a free tier
- 12
- Cheaper to start
- -
- Lonboard starts at
- Free
Why people look past Lonboard
Only what the record supports. Each point below is a figure on the Lonboard entry measured against the tools listed beside it.
There is only one tier
Lonboard publishes a single plan, Lonboard at Free. There is no smaller tier to drop to if the fit is wrong or the budget moves.
What each alternative does differently
Ordered by the aggregated rating on each catalogue entry. Differences are drawn from price, pricing model, tier count and rating, the fields the category listing carries. For a feature-level difference, follow the head-to-head link on each card: those pages read both full records.
WebGL-powered framework for visual exploratory data analysis of large datasets, developed by
- Sold on a open-source model rather than Open source, no licence fee.
QGIS
Free, open-source desktop GIS application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of
- Sold on a freemium model rather than Open source, no licence fee.
Location Intelligence Platform
- No free tier, where Lonboard has one.
- Sold on a quote model rather than Open source, no licence fee.
- 4 tiers to Lonboard's 1.
Serverless Python for geospatial: write a UDF, get a map tile endpoint and an HTTP API
- Publishes an entry price of $20/month, where Lonboard does not.
- Sold on a Per month by compute tier model rather than Open source, no licence fee.
- 4 tiers to Lonboard's 1.
Long-running open source geospatial analysis engine for raster, vector and terrain processing
Priced and rated the same as Lonboard on the figures we hold. The difference, if there is one, is in the feature records.
Hosted 3D geospatial tiling and streaming, metered by storage, streaming and gigapixels
- Publishes an entry price of $149/month, where Lonboard does not.
- Sold on a Per month by storage, streaming and gigapixels model rather than Open source, no licence fee.
- 4 tiers to Lonboard's 1.
Every Lonboard alternative at a glance
A dash means the catalogue entry carries no figure, not that the answer is nothing.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Tiers | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lonboard (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | 1 | |
| deck.glIf you are building a web application rather than exploring data in a notebook | Free | Open-source | - | vs Lonboard |
| QGISIf you want a desktop GIS with editing, layout and print output rather than a notebook library | Free | Freemium | - | vs Lonboard |
| CARTOIf you need hosted, shareable analysis rather than a local Python environment | On request | Quote | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| Fused | Free, then $20/month | Per month by compute tier | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| GRASS GIS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Cesium ion | Free, then $149/month | Per month by storage, streaming and gigapixels | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| Google Maps | Free | Free consumer app, funded by Google's advertising business | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Felt | Free | Quote | 3 | vs Lonboard |
| Potree | Free | Open source, no licence fee | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Emlid Studio | Free | Free of charge, no licence fee | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Atlas.co | Free, then $23/month | Per user per month | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| SAGA GIS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Ride with GPS | Free | Freemium, per user per month | 3 | vs Lonboard |
| ArcGIS Survey123 | On request | Per user per year by ArcGIS user type | 3 | vs Lonboard |
| Foursquare Spatial Studio | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Lonboard |
| Correlator3D | $295/month | One-time purchase | 5 | vs Lonboard |
| Leica Infinity | On request | Quote | 2 | vs Lonboard |
| Global Mapper | $700/one-time | One-time purchase | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| onX Maps | On request | Separate per-product subscriptions, per user per year | 4 | vs Lonboard |
| Geographic Calculator | On request | Quote | 3 | vs Lonboard |
| Agisoft Metashape | $179/one-time | One-time purchase | 3 | vs Lonboard |
| ArcGIS Field Maps | On request | Included with an ArcGIS user type licence | 3 | vs Lonboard |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry; Softwr hosts no reviews of these products. How each figure is used is set out on the Lonboard badges page.
Cheaper ways to solve the same problem
Free to start (12)
These publish a tier that costs nothing, so they can be evaluated before any money changes hands.
- deck.gl , Free
- QGIS , Free
- Fused , Free, then $20/month
- GRASS GIS , Free
- Cesium ion , Free, then $149/month
- Google Maps , Free
- Felt , Free
- Potree , Free
What you would be giving up
Lonboard is most often brought in for an analyst exploring a national road or parcel dataset in a notebook where pydeck or ipyleaflet becomes unusable at that size, a researcher publishing a reproducible analysis where the visualisation must run from the same script as the processing, a data scientist joining spatial data to model outputs in pandas and needing to see the result immediately without exporting to a gis, a team building an internal analysis pipeline on geoparquet that wants rendering without a serialisation step in the middle. Anything replacing it has to cover the ones you actually depend on, and a cheaper tool that misses one of them is not cheaper.
Two things this page cannot settle. It compares on price, model, tier count and rating, because those are the fields the category listing carries, feature-level differences need both full records, which is what the head-to-head pages load. And the ratings are third-party aggregates imported with each entry rather than reviews written here, so a 0.2 difference between two tools is noise rather than a finding.
If Lonboard is broadly right and the question is cost, the Lonboard pricing breakdown covers every tier and what each one adds. If you want the whole field rather than a shortlist, the Maps category lists everything the directory holds, and best maps tools ranks them.
Lonboard runs on linux, macos, windows. Platform coverage is not carried on the category listing for the alternatives, so it is one more thing to check on each head-to-head page rather than here.
Questions about Lonboard alternatives
- What are the main alternatives to Lonboard?
- 22 other maps tools are listed in this directory, led by deck.gl, QGIS, CARTO, Fused. They are ordered by the aggregated rating on each catalogue entry, not by any Softwr ranking.
- What is the best free alternative to Lonboard?
- 12 of the alternatives listed here can be used without paying: deck.gl, QGIS, Fused, GRASS GIS, Cesium ion.
- Why do people look for an alternative to Lonboard?
- On the figures on record, one thing stands out: there is only one tier. Each is set out with the numbers behind it above.
- What would I give up by switching from Lonboard?
- Lonboard is most often brought in for an analyst exploring a national road or parcel dataset in a notebook where pydeck or ipyleaflet becomes unusable at that size, a researcher publishing a reproducible analysis where the visualisation must run from the same script as the processing, a data scientist joining spatial data to model outputs in pandas and needing to see the result immediately without exporting to a gis, a team building an internal analysis pipeline on geoparquet that wants rendering without a serialisation step in the middle. Anything you replace it with has to cover the ones you actually rely on, the side-by-side comparisons linked from each alternative below put the two feature records against each other.
- Is there an open-source alternative to Lonboard?
- deck.gl is recorded with an open-source licence model.
- How were these Lonboard alternatives chosen?
- They are the tools filed in the same category, Maps, ordered by the aggregated rating on each entry. There is no editorial shortlist, and nothing on this page is paid: no sponsored placement runs on alternatives pages and the order cannot be bought. Softwr has not used these products.
- Where can I compare Lonboard against one of these directly?
- Every alternative below has a side-by-side page against Lonboard covering price, platforms, features and what each one is used for. Those pages read the full record for both products rather than the summary shown here.
- Does this list cover every maps tool?
- No. It covers what this directory holds in the Maps category, 22 tools beside Lonboard. The category page lists the rest of the catalogue as it grows.