Fused

Serverless Python for geospatial: write a UDF, get a map tile endpoint and an HTTP API

As of 1 September 2026, Fused has a free plan and paid plans start at $20/month. Turns a Python function into a live map layer and an API without provisioning anything, with published pricing from free to $2,000 a month. Softwr lists it under Maps. Fused is available on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.

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Overview

What Fused does

Fused runs user defined functions, Python functions decorated to accept a spatial bounding box or a tile index, on serverless infrastructure. Write a function that reads a cloud-optimised GeoTIFF, a Parquet table or a Snowflake query, transforms it and returns a GeoDataFrame or an array, and Fused gives you back a tile endpoint you can drop into deck.gl, kepler.gl, Felt, ArcGIS or a notebook, plus an HTTP API for the same function. Results are cached, so repeated map views do not re-run the computation. The reason this matters is that the alternative is a real backend. Publishing a dynamic geospatial layer normally means a tile server, a cache, a queue and someone to run them. Fused collapses that into a decorator, which is why data teams use it to prototype layers against Overture, NASA, NOAA, Census and Planetary Computer data in an afternoon rather than a sprint. It reads from and writes to the modern data stack directly: DuckDB, BigQuery, Snowflake, Earth Engine. Adopters are geospatial data scientists and engineering teams that already work in Python and want to skip the serving layer. Pricing is published and unusually steep in its steps: Free, $20 Starter, $200 Developer and $2,000 Professional per month, which means the jump from an individual to a team is a factor of ten. Fused is a small San Francisco company at pre-seed stage, so an organisation putting a production map behind it is accepting real vendor risk in exchange for not building a tile service.

What people use it for

A data team that wants to publish a dynamic layer computed from a large Parquet dataset without standing up and operating a tile server
An analyst prototyping against Overture, Sentinel or Census data who needs a working map in an afternoon rather than a data engineering ticket
An application that needs a geospatial computation exposed as an HTTP endpoint, where the alternative is a container, a queue and an on-call rota
A consultancy delivering an interactive constraint or suitability map to a client, computed live from source data rather than pre-baked into static tiles

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Fused.

The price steps are brutal: $20 to $200 to $2,000 a month with no intermediate tier, so a two-person team that outgrows Starter faces a tenfold increase for what is often a modest capacity gap.
Published tiers do not state the actual compute, storage or request allowances, so the only way to know whether $200 covers your workload is to run it and find out.
Fused is at pre-seed stage with a small team, and putting a customer-facing map behind a startup’s serverless platform is a continuity risk that a procurement review will flag.
It is Python-only and assumes competence with cloud-native geospatial formats; there is no path for an analyst who works in a desktop GIS and not in code.
Serverless execution means cold starts and per-tile latency on uncached views, so a first load of a heavy UDF over a wide area is noticeably slower than a pre-rendered tile set.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Fused

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Fusedvs
deck.gl
deck.gl: The rendering library Fused feeds; free, but you supply the backend yourself
Fusedvs
CARTO
CARTO: A mature cloud spatial platform if you need an enterprise vendor rather than a startup
Fusedvs
Kepler.gl
Kepler.gl: Free exploratory visualisation when you do not need a live computed endpoint

Pricing

What Fused costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Workbench access
AI assistant
Local UDF runs
No credit card required
Basic compute limits

Starter

$20 /mo

Secrets management
Higher compute limits
Office hours support

Developer

$200 /mo

Dedicated jobs
GitHub integration
Expanded compute, storage and AI token allowance

Professional

$2,000 /mo

Team collaboration
Dedicated training
Substantially increased usage limits

Capabilities

Features

User defined functions
Decorate a Python function to run per bounding box or per map tile on managed infrastructure
Instant tile endpoints
Every UDF gets an XYZ tile URL usable in any web mapping library
HTTP API
Call the same function as a REST endpoint from an application or notebook
Caching
Cache expensive intermediate results so repeated map views do not recompute
Workbench
Browser IDE for writing, running and previewing UDFs against a live map
Data stack connectors
Read from DuckDB, BigQuery, Snowflake, S3, Earth Engine and Planetary Computer
Public UDF catalogue
A GitHub repository of shared functions covering common datasets and operations
Local execution
Run UDFs locally through the Python SDK during development
GitHub integration
Sync UDFs to a repository on the Developer tier and above

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

What does Fused actually give me?

A Python function becomes a map tile endpoint and an HTTP API on managed infrastructure, with caching, without you running a server.

How much does it cost?

Free, then $20, $200 and $2,000 per month for Starter, Developer and Professional. Usage allowances are not itemised publicly.

Can I run UDFs locally?

Yes, through the Python SDK, which is how most development is done before deploying.

Does it replace PostGIS or BigQuery?

No. It reads from them. Fused is the compute and serving layer, not the store.

Is it a mature company?

No. It is a small pre-seed San Francisco company. The technology is real; the vendor risk is real too.

Keep looking

Where to go from Fused

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Fused, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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