Skip to content

GeoLibre vs. other GIS platforms

How GeoLibre compares to the desktop GIS, cloud GIS, and web-mapping tools people most often ask about: QGIS, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, CARTO, Felt, and kepler.gl — plus Google Earth and Google Earth Pro, which get a section of their own because they are virtual globes rather than a GIS.

GeoLibre is not trying to replace any of these outright. It occupies a spot none of them quite fills: a free and open-source GIS that runs in a browser tab with nothing installed, keeps your data on your own machine, and still ships real analysis, spatial SQL, cartography, and a project file — then packages the same app as a desktop install, an Android app, an iOS app, and a Jupyter widget.

How to read this

Comparisons like this age quickly and are written by an interested party. The GeoLibre column reflects what ships today; the other columns describe each product's mainstream, out-of-the-box behavior as of August 2026, not what is reachable with every add-on, extension, or third-party plugin. Where a capability arrives through a separate product (QField for QGIS in the field, ArcGIS Field Maps for ArcGIS), the table says so rather than crediting it to the base product. Found something wrong or out of date? Please open an issue — corrections are welcome.

This page is closed to new columns

The comparison matrix below covers a fixed set of platforms and is not accepting additional ones. Every extra column means more than forty cells that have to be researched, dated, and re-verified on each update, and the tables have reached the width a page can readably hold. Adding more would make the comparison harder to read and harder to keep honest.

Google Earth sits in its own section with a short table of its own, because it is a viewer rather than a GIS and most of the matrix rows would simply read "—" for it. That is a one-off, not an opening.

Corrections to the platforms already listed are still very welcome. If you maintain another tool and want it compared with GeoLibre, publish that comparison on your own site and add a link under Comparisons hosted elsewhere.

Complementary, not competing

A useful way to think about GeoLibre and QGIS is smartphone cameras versus professional cameras. Smartphone cameras did not replace professional cameras, and it would not have made sense to pour every advance in photography into making professional cameras better. The two serve different people and different moments. A professional camera offers tremendous power, flexibility, and control. A smartphone camera prioritizes accessibility, convenience, and the ability to capture and share something instantly.

QGIS is the professional camera: mature, powerful, feature-rich, and extensible. GeoLibre is closer to the smartphone camera: lightweight, reachable from a web browser, cross-platform, and designed so that people can work with geospatial data without installing complex software or setting up servers.

QGIS and GeoLibre as professional and smartphone cameras

The geospatial community benefits from both. Separate projects can also experiment with new architectures and technologies, and the ideas that work out can strengthen the broader open-source geospatial ecosystem. The goal of GeoLibre is not to replace QGIS, but to make GIS accessible in places, and to people, where a traditional desktop GIS may not be the best fit.

The rest of this page is written in that spirit: the tables are there to help you pick the right tool for a given job, not to declare a winner.

At a glance

GeoLibre QGIS ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online CARTO Felt kepler.gl
License MIT, open source GPL-2.0+, open source Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary Proprietary MIT, open source
Cost Free Free Paid subscription Paid subscription (credit-metered analysis) Paid subscription Paid subscription Free
Browser Full app, nothing to install No official browser build No Yes (the product is the browser app) Yes Yes (the authoring product) Yes
Desktop Windows, macOS, Linux (Tauri) Windows, macOS, Linux Windows only — — — —
Mobile Native Android and iOS apps; responsive touch layout Via QField / Mergin Maps (separate apps) — Via ArcGIS Field Maps (separate app) — Felt Field App for iOS and Android (separate app) Responsive web
In Jupyter Full app as an anywidget, two-way sync Via qgis bindings, not the UI Notebooks drive arcpy, not the UI ArcGIS API for Python Via pydeck-carto — Yes (widget)
Works offline Yes — PWA install, offline area download, desktop build Yes Yes Limited (Field Maps offline areas) No — connected platform by design Field App offline areas, syncing on reconnect (higher plans) Client-side, but assets are hosted
Where your data lives Your device — processed client-side in the browser session Your device Your device / your enterprise geodatabase Vendor cloud Your own cloud data warehouse — no CARTO-side storage (except cache) or sync; imports write to a warehouse you own Vendor cloud, or a single-tenant instance in your own AWS account (Enterprise) Your browser
Project file .geolibre / .geolibre.json (open, documented) .qgs / .qgz (open) .aprx (proprietary) Web map JSON (hosted) Map/Workflow JSON via CLI and MCP Hosted map (no local file) Exportable map config JSON

Data and formats

GeoLibre QGIS ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online CARTO Felt kepler.gl
Format breadth Wide — DuckDB-WASM Spatial plus in-house readers Widest — everything GDAL/OGR reads Very wide, plus native Esri formats Common upload formats Common upload formats + RaQuet for raster data Common upload formats CSV, GeoJSON, Arrow/Parquet
Cloud-native vector GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, PMTiles, streamed over HTTP range requests GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, PMTiles (recent GDAL) GeoParquet (recent), no native PMTiles — GeoParquet Some cloud sources on higher plans Arrow/Parquet
Cloud-native raster COG, Zarr, Cloud-Optimized NetCDF/HDF, kerchunk, MBTiles COG, Zarr (GDAL's built-in driver) COG; Zarr as a native multidimensional raster type Hosted imagery layers COG and GeoTIFF, loaded into warehouse tables (RaQuet spec) GeoTIFF upload —
STAC Built-in catalog browser + STAC Index discovery Built-in STAC connections (Browser panel and Data Source Manager) Built-in STAC connections and the Explore STAC pane Living Atlas (not STAC) — — —
OGC services XYZ; WMS/WFS/WMTS discovered via GetCapabilities; OGC API Features/Tiles from a landing page, collection, or items URL Full OGC support Full OGC support Yes Limited Limited XYZ / vector tiles
Esri services and geodatabases ArcGIS FeatureServer, VectorTileServer, I3S, plus local .gdb File Geodatabase folders (desktop) Yes Native Hosted feature, tile, imagery, and scene layers One-way ArcGIS Online / Portal migration tooling only Some ArcGIS layers —
Databases PostGIS browsing, DuckDB, in-browser PGlite/PostGIS PostGIS, SpatiaLite, Oracle, SQL Server, SAP HANA Enterprise geodatabases (SDE) Hosted only The core product — BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Oracle Spatial, all queried live PostGIS / Snowflake connections (higher plans) —
3D and point clouds LiDAR, 3D Tiles, I3S, Gaussian splats, glTF/GLB, Cesium globe pane Point clouds, 3D map view, tiled scene layers Deepest 3D — scenes, I3S, mesh, LAS Scene Viewer 3D map view, extrusion, Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles basemap. No point clouds or LiDAR — Extrusions and hexbins only
Planetary basemaps Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Galilean moons, Titan, Pluto, Charon — with a per-project ellipsoid driving measurements Via plugins Limited — — — —

Analysis and processing

GeoLibre QGIS ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online CARTO Felt kepler.gl
Geoprocessing tools 1,000+ (Whitebox suite + GeoLibre's own), running in the browser on WebAssembly 1,000+ (native, GDAL, GRASS, SAGA) Most mature and complete, plus paid extensions A useful subset, credit-metered 200+ Workflows components and 180+ Analytics Toolbox SQL functions, executed as SQL in your warehouse A small set of common tools No tool catalog — analysis goes through SQL and the AI assistant
Where analysis runs Your browser (WASM), no server required; optional Python sidecar on desktop Your machine Your machine, or a server/portal Vendor cloud Your cloud data warehouse — queries are pushed down live, with repeated identical queries served from CARTO-managed cache Vendor cloud Your browser
Vector analysis Buffer, overlay, dissolve, joins, selection, topology checks — Turf.js, or GeoPandas via Pyodide/sidecar Comprehensive Comprehensive Common tools Buffer, overlay, spatial join, clip, Voronoi/Delaunay, KNN, trade areas — as warehouse SQL Common tools Spatial joins via SQL or the AI assistant
Raster analysis Hillshade, slope, contour, zonal/focal stats, raster calculator, reclassify, mosaic — rasterio sidecar with a browser fallback Comprehensive (GDAL/GRASS/SAGA) Comprehensive; Spatial Analyst extension Limited Narrow — zonal statistics and band value extraction — —
Spatial SQL DuckDB Spatial, PGlite/PostGIS, and Apache Sedona — all in the browser Virtual layers, DB Manager, PostGIS connections SQL against enterprise geodatabases — The native interface — warehouse SQL everywhere: query sources, SQL parameters, Workflows, SQL API SQL on connected sources (higher plans) DuckDB SQL Data Explorer over loaded data and remote URLs
Model / batch chaining Batch runner with model and pipeline chaining Graphical Model Designer ModelBuilder — Workflows — visual DAG builder with scheduling, version history, and SQL export — —
Spatial statistics Toolbox including Emerging Hot Spot Analysis Via plugins and processing providers Full Spatial Statistics toolbox Some Deep — Getis-Ord, Moran's I, space-time hotspots, GWR, kriging/IDW, composite scores, twin areas — —
Network analysis Isochrones, service areas, OD cost matrices, routing QGIS Network Analysis, plugins (ORS, pgRouting) Network Analyst extension Routing services (credits) Isolines, routes, and routing matrices via Location Data Services (credit-metered) — —
AI / ML AI Segmentation (SamGeo/SAM 3), in-browser ONNX/YOLO object detection Via plugins arcgis.learn deep-learning toolset Pretrained models (credits) BigQuery ML and Snowflake ML components; embeddings and geospatial foundation models — —
Processing history Every run listed, re-runnable, with copyable Python History panel Geoprocessing history — Workflow version history and run logs; org-wide activity/audit log (Enterprise) — —

Cartography, styling, and layout

GeoLibre QGIS ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online CARTO Felt kepler.gl
Renderers Single, categorized, graduated, rule-based, expression, heatmap, cluster, proportional symbols, diagrams Richest — plus every symbol layer type Very rich Smart-mapping styles Point, line, polygon, grid, H3, raster — plus heatmap and cluster aggregation; quantile/quantize/log/custom scales Simple, well-designed defaults Visualization-oriented
Data-defined everything Expression Builder wired into filters, labels, styling, field calculation, selection Yes, pervasive Attribute-driven symbology (Arcade) Arcade Attribute-driven styling per channel; custom SQL aggregation expressions in place of an expression language — —
Labeling Data-defined engine with placement, offset, rotation, wrap, dedup Best-in-class placement engine Maplex label engine Basic Basic Basic Basic
Print layout Print Layout composer with legend, scale, title block, atlas / map series, PNG and PDF Full print composer with atlas Full layout view with map series Basic print / export Export to high-res image and PDF Export to image and PDF Image export
Style interchange Imports and exports OGC SLD, QGIS QML, and Mapbox GL JSON QML, SLD .lyrx, limited SLD — — — —
Project import Reads QGIS .qgs/.qgz and ArcGIS Pro .aprx/.mapx Reads its own Reads its own (and .mxd) — — — —
Story maps Built-in story map builder with presenter view and standalone HTML export Via plugins — ArcGIS StoryMaps (separate product) Built-in skill for storymaps app development Shareable maps, not chaptered stories —
Dashboards Dashboard panel of chart and indicator widgets with cross-filtering Via plugins — ArcGIS Dashboards (separate product) Core to CARTO Builder — formula, category, pie, histogram, range, time series, and table widgets with cross-filtering Dashboard components — statistics, bar, histogram, time series Charts and filters in-map

Automation, extensibility, and sharing

GeoLibre QGIS ArcGIS Pro ArcGIS Online CARTO Felt kepler.gl
Scripting Python Console, geolibre Python package, docked Jupyter notebook beside the map PyQGIS, qgis_process headless CLI arcpy, notebooks ArcGIS API for Python / JavaScript CARTO + deck.gl + CARTO CLI + REST APIs REST API + Python client JS library
Notebook integration The whole app embeds as a Jupyter anywidget with two-way project sync Bindings, not the UI Notebooks in Pro drive arcpy Hosted notebooks pydeck-carto widget in Jupyter or Colab; Analytics Toolbox SQL from any warehouse notebook — Widget
Plugin ecosystem TypeScript plugin API, built-ins, zip installs, bundled drop-ins Largest — thousands of Python plugins .NET add-ins, Python toolboxes Configurable app templates Workflows extension packages None (API only) Fork the library
AI assistant Natural-language assistant that turns plain English into auditable, undoable operations; bring your own API key Via plugins Copilot features Arcade assistant (beta) and the AI assistants family AI Agents on a map — semantic model, configurable tools, bring your own LLM — plus a hosted MCP server, CLI, and agent skills AI-assisted map making Yes — OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, or local Ollama; bring your own key
Real-time collaboration Yes (MVP) — hosted relay, optionally self-hosted — plus anchored review comments No (Mergin Maps for sync) No Shared editing of hosted layers Asynchronous plus real-time map-anchored comments Best-in-class multiplayer editing and comments —
Embedding maponly and layout=viewer URL modes, a versioned postMessage API, and the typed @geolibre/embed npm client QGIS Server / QGIS2Web export — Embeddable web apps Embeddable private maps with URL parameters and a postMessage API Embeddable maps Embeddable
Self-hosting Docker image, or serve the static build anywhere QGIS Server ArcGIS Enterprise (paid) — Yes — Docker on a single VM or Kubernetes, on any vendor cloud or on-premises Single-tenant AWS VPC, Felt-maintained (Enterprise) Static build
Standalone export Whole project to one offline HTML file, no server Via qgis2web plugin — — Data export to CSV, GeoJSON, GeoPackage, GeoParquet, KML, and Shapefile — HTML export

Google Earth and Google Earth Pro

Google Earth is the tool most people have used before they ever open a GIS, and it is the comparison this project is asked about most often. It belongs in a different category than everything above: Google Earth is a virtual globe for exploring, annotating, and presenting Google's imagery, while GeoLibre is a GIS that happens to ship a globe. The two overlap at the moment of looking at the Earth and diverge almost everywhere after it.

Two products share the name, and they are heading in opposite directions:

  • Google Earth (the web app, plus the Android and iOS apps) is the one Google is investing in. It comes in three plans: Standard is free, while Professional and Professional Advanced are paid per seat. Standard covers exploring, drawing, measuring, historical imagery, Street View, and broadly applicable data layers such as administrative areas, postal codes, and household income, with projects stored in Google Drive and shared like any other Drive file. The paid plans add specialized layers (finer elevation contours, slope and aspect, inundation history, parcel zoning, traffic), larger design quotas and cloud import storage, and more of the Gemini-powered Ask Google Earth, which every plan includes at a limited, higher, or highest level of access.
  • Google Earth Pro (desktop, version 7.3.x) is the free application GIS users have leaned on for historical imagery, Shapefile and GeoTIFF import, viewshed, elevation profiles, and HD movie export. Google has announced that desktop downloads end on 25 June 2027, and that existing installations keep working after that date. A workflow that depends on being able to install Earth Pro on new machines is worth planning around now.

Google Earth Engine is a third, unrelated product — a cloud platform for planetary-scale raster analysis — and is out of scope here.

GeoLibre Google Earth (web and mobile) Google Earth Pro (desktop)
License and cost MIT, free Proprietary; free tier plus paid per-seat plans Proprietary, free — downloads end 25 June 2027
What it is for Analysis, cartography, and data work Exploring, annotating, and presenting imagery The same, with a GIS-adjacent import and measurement set
Runs on Browser, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Jupyter Browser, Android, iOS Windows, macOS, Linux
Where your data lives Your device, processed client-side Your Google account and Drive Your device
Data in Vector, raster, tiles, databases, STAC, OGC and Esri services, and cloud-native formats (COG, GeoParquet, PMTiles, Zarr) KML/KMZ, GeoJSON, and zipped Shapefile into projects, plus experimental GLB-only 3D model import on the web; more import storage on paid plans KML/KMZ, Shapefile, GeoTIFF and image overlays, CSV with address geocoding, GPS/GPX, MapInfo TAB
Attribute data Attribute table, joins, field calculator, quick filters, spatial SQL Placemark descriptions Basic attribute display for imported files
Projections Reprojects on import, searchable EPSG catalog, per-project ellipsoid driving measurements WGS84 globe only WGS84 globe only
Analysis 1,000+ geoprocessing tools, spatial SQL, spatial statistics, routing and isochrones Measurement, elevation profiles on the web, and layer filtering Measure, elevation profile, viewshed
Symbology Data-driven single, categorized, graduated, rule-based, expression, heatmap, cluster, proportional KML styles set by hand KML styles set by hand, plus style templates driven by a data column
Historical imagery Historical Imagery plugin over Esri World Imagery snapshots, plus Timelapse annual basemaps A timeline of the capture dates available for a place, plus historical Street View on the web Historical imagery slider
Photorealistic 3D and Street View Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Street View with your own API key; plus 3D Tiles, I3S, LiDAR, COPC, and Gaussian splats Native, no key, best-in-class 3D buildings and Street View
Presentation output Story maps, print layout with atlas, camera tour recorded to video, dashboards, one-file offline HTML export Shareable Drive projects with a slide-style present mode Movie Maker HD video and high-resolution image export
Project file .geolibre.json — open, documented, diffable, local Hosted project in Drive; KML export .kmz / .kml
Automation Python package, MCP server, Jupyter widget, TypeScript plugin API, embed API — —

Where they overlap

GeoLibre borrows from the Google Earth playbook on purpose, and several features exist precisely because people expect them from Earth: a Cesium globe with terrain, an Elevation Profile along a drawn or selected line, an interactive viewshed from a right-clicked point, Historical Imagery, Street View, a camera tour recorder that exports video, and planetary globes for the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

KML fidelity gets the same treatment. GeoLibre reads KML and KMZ with an in-house parser that preserves embedded symbology, folder structure, GroundOverlay images, time-tagged placemarks, embedded COLLADA models, and NetworkLink Super-Overlays served as tiles rather than loaded whole — so a document authored in Earth Pro generally arrives looking the way it did there. That makes GeoLibre a realistic destination for a KML archive when Earth Pro downloads end, and the map's right-click menu still offers Open in Google Earth for trips in the other direction.

Where Google Earth is still better

  • Imagery. Google's own imagery archive, its depth of historical coverage, and the quality of its photorealistic 3D mesh are not things an open-source project reproduces. GeoLibre can display Google's photorealistic tiles with your API key, but the archive and the historical slider belong to Earth.
  • Street View. Native, complete, and free of credential setup.
  • Effortlessness. Earth opens and flies. There is no layer model, no CRS, no project file, and nothing to learn — for simply showing someone a place, that is exactly right.

Where GeoLibre is better

Everything downstream of looking: attribute tables and joins, a real geoprocessing toolbox, spatial SQL, data-driven cartography, print layouts, reprojection, and an open project file you can keep, diff, script, and embed. Earth shows you the world; GeoLibre lets you ask questions of your own data on top of it — and keeps that data on your machine rather than in a Google account.

Where each one is the right choice

Choose GeoLibre when you want a real GIS in a browser tab with nothing to install, your data has to stay on your machine, you work with cloud-native formats (COG, GeoParquet, PMTiles, Zarr, STAC), you want the same app on desktop, Android, and inside a notebook, or you are embedding a map workspace into your own product and want an open, documented project format and license.

Choose QGIS when you need the widest possible format support through GDAL/OGR, the deepest desktop cartography and label placement, a mature plugin for a niche task, or heavy local processing over datasets larger than a browser can hold.

Choose ArcGIS Pro when you are already in the Esri ecosystem, need enterprise geodatabase editing and versioning, the deepest 3D and imagery workflows, or a specific specialized toolbox with organizational support behind it.

Choose ArcGIS Online when the priority is hosted layers, organizational sharing and permissions, and the surrounding Esri app family (Dashboards, StoryMaps, Field Maps, Experience Builder).

Choose CARTO when your data already lives in a cloud data warehouse and you need it to stay there. It suits teams that want AI Agents, visual analytics pipelines, dashboards and/or custom apps for large-scale data that non-analysts can use.

Choose Felt when collaborative, low-friction map making with a team is the whole job, and polished multiplayer editing and field data collection matter more than analysis depth. Enterprise plans can run a single-tenant instance in your own AWS account if data residency is the blocker.

Choose kepler.gl when you want fast, beautiful exploratory visualization of large point and trip datasets, and DuckDB SQL plus its AI assistant cover the analysis you need — rather than a geoprocessing toolbox, cartographic output, or a portable project file.

Choose Google Earth when the job is to look at the world, show it to someone, or annotate a place — Google's imagery, historical coverage, Street View, and photorealistic 3D are unmatched, and nothing has to be learned first. Choose GeoLibre over Google Earth Pro when you need attribute data, analysis, projections, or cartographic output, or when you want a successor now that Earth Pro downloads end on 25 June 2027; GeoLibre reads KML and KMZ with their symbology, overlays, models, and Super-Overlays intact.

They also compose. GeoLibre reads QGIS and ArcGIS Pro projects and exchanges symbology as SLD, QML, and Mapbox GL JSON, so it is reasonable to author in QGIS or Pro and publish or embed with GeoLibre.

Where GeoLibre is not the strongest option

Stated plainly, so the table above is worth trusting:

  • Very large local datasets. Browser memory and WASM are real limits. Client-side vector tiling and streaming push the ceiling up, but a multi-gigabyte local processing job still belongs on a desktop GIS. The desktop build's Python sidecar helps; QGIS or ArcGIS Pro helps more.
  • Format breadth. GDAL/OGR reads more than DuckDB-WASM Spatial does. Some formats — notably File Geodatabase — only work in the desktop build.
  • Depth of specialized toolboxes. ArcGIS Pro's Spatial Analyst, Geostatistical Analyst, and Network Analyst, and QGIS's twenty years of plugins, cover workflows GeoLibre has no equivalent for.
  • Enterprise data management. Versioned editing, replication, and enterprise geodatabase administration are outside GeoLibre's scope.
  • Maturity. GeoLibre is stable and in active development, but it is far younger than QGIS or ArcGIS. Some capabilities listed as shipping are recent — see Recently added.

Comparisons hosted elsewhere

Since this page cannot keep growing, other projects are welcome to compare themselves with GeoLibre on their own site, and to have that page linked from here.

To add one, follow the documentation contribution instructions and open a pull request adding a single line of the form - [Acme vs GeoLibre](https://acme.example/vs-geolibre), maintained by Acme. To keep the list useful:

  • The linked page must actually compare your tool with GeoLibre, rather than being a general product, pricing, or marketing page.
  • Link the comparison itself, not a site root or a redirect.
  • Say who maintains it, so readers know whose viewpoint they are reading.
  • It must be publicly readable, with no login, paywall, or signup.
  • One entry per project.

These pages are written and maintained by their own authors. GeoLibre does not review, verify, or endorse what they claim, including what they claim about GeoLibre. Links that stop working, or that describe GeoLibre inaccurately and are not corrected when asked, will be removed.

See also