Leaflet Vs Mapbox

Leaflet Vs Mapbox

Leaflet and Mapbox are two common tools for visualizing geospatial data. They are both excellent tools, but you should probably know the difference between them, before choosing one of them for your project. That is what I aim to do in this article.

First, let’s see what both of them do:

Leaflet:
Leaflet is an open-source web mapping tool

Mapbox:
Mapbox is a private company that provides a suite of tools that are useful in geospatial analytics. One of those tools is Mapbox GL JS which is a web mapping tool similar to leaflet

So as you can see, unlike leaflet, mapbox does a lot more than just web mapping.

But for this article, let’s see how they stack up to each other in various factors:

1> Community
-> leaflet no doubt has a better community as it has been around for a longer time. It has better documentation and has way more coverage on forums like stackoverflow

2> Maintenance 
-> mapbox gl js wins this one, as it is actively developed and maintained by Mapbox, meanwhile leaflet barely gets any new features and updates

3> Flexibility
-> Leaflet being an open-source tool definitely wins this one, as Mapbox is specifically designed to work in the Mapbox ecosystem

4> Powerful
-> Mapbox wins this one, as it has all the features from leaflet and a lot more

Final thoughts:
While both of these tools are great. Here’s my suggestions: if you just need something quick and running, go with Leaflet, and if you’re building something that you think will need to be maintained for a long time, use Mapbox GL JS