Transit
Public transit trip planning and real-time arrivals for buses, trains and shared bikes and scooters
Free
Category
The best Maps software
Maps & Navigation software and applications
- Tools listed
- 50
All 50 maps tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What maps software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 50 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0Foursquare Places API
- Median entry price
- $29.99across 15 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $700Global Mapper
- Publish a $0 plan
- 27of 50
Paid maps plans in this set start anywhere from $0 a month for Foursquare Places API to $700 for Global Mapper. The median entry price across the 15 tools that publish one is $29.99, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Correlator3D's at $6,400 a month, 9.1× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
27 of 50 publish a $0 plan, and 19 of those charge nothing at all. 7 tools have no free tier of any kind.
14 of 50 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
Foursquare Places API pricingGlobal Mapper pricingCorrelator3D plans
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 50 maps listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- freemium
- 9
- Open source, no licence fee
- 6
- quote
- 6
- One-time purchase
- 3
- free
- 2
- open-source
- 2
- Free consumer app, funded by Google's advertising business
- 1
- Free of charge, no licence fee
- 1
- Free to riders; revenue from agency data and fare-payment transaction fees
- 1
- Freemium, per user per month
- 1
- Freemium, standalone Pro or bundled with Outside+
- 1
- Included with an ArcGIS user type licence
- 1
- Per month by compute tier
- 1
- Per month by storage, streaming and gigapixels
- 1
- Per user per month
- 1
- Per user per year by ArcGIS user type
- 1
- Separate per-product subscriptions, per user per year
- 1
- subscription
- 1
- usage-based
- 1
Separately, 14 of 50 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What “Maps” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 50 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- gis7
- Open Source5
- navigation4
- point cloud4
- drone mapping3
- Field Data Collection3
- Gnss3
- Hydrology3
- Lidar3
- mapping3
- maps3
- offline3
Carried by a single tool: 3d Reconstruction, cycling, Field Data, geostatistics, Local Search, Post Processing, route planning, Total Station. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
27 of 50 maps tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0 to $700 is a $700 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $700 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
16 of 50 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 3 of them. The advertised price is the first rung. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 19 billing models: freemium on 9 listings, Open source, no licence fee on 6, and 17 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare maps tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Transit vs Cesium ion
- Cesium ion vs Trailforks
- Trailforks vs ArcGIS Survey123
- ArcGIS Survey123 vs GRASS GIS
- GRASS GIS vs SW Maps
- SW Maps vs Potree
- Potree vs WhiteboxTools
- WhiteboxTools vs onX Maps
Go straight to the numbers
- Transitpricingalternatives
- Cesium ionpricingalternatives
- Trailforkspricingalternatives
- ArcGIS Survey123pricingalternatives
- GRASS GISpricingalternatives
- SW Mapspricingalternatives
Questions people ask about maps software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does maps software cost?
- Across the 50 maps tools listed here, paid plans start between $0 and $700 a month, with a median entry price of $29.99. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $6,400 a month (Correlator3D). 27 of 50 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest maps software?
- 19 of the 50 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Foursquare Places API has the lowest published entry price at $0 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free maps software?
- Yes, 27 of 50 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 19 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- How is maps software usually billed?
- freemium (9), Open source, no licence fee (6), quote (6), One-time purchase (3), plus 15 less common arrangements, counted across the 50 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 14 of 50 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does maps software actually cover?
- The 50 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are gis (7), open source (5), navigation (4), point cloud (4), drone mapping (3). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under maps may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do maps tools offer?
- 30 of 50 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 3 tiers. 16 of 50 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many maps tools are listed on Softwr?
- 50 approved maps listings appear on this page, including Transit, Cesium ion, Trailforks, ArcGIS Survey123. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/maps, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 50 picks
The shortlist for “Maps”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.