{"slug": "mapbox", "name": "Mapbox", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 16, "warners": 0, "score": 5.893, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-09", "latest": "2026-10-13", "why": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 10, "compare": 3, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "mapbox.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.mapbox.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Mapbox"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 792052576, "item_id": 49503286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503286", "by": "cwillu", "date": "2026-08-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM.", "excerpt": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM. Bonus: when something is fucky, I can actually generally get it fixed, unlike google which continues to report an 80kph speed limit in various residential streets and school zones in my city.", "context": "", "use_case": "turn-by-turn navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps"}, {"id": 775719328, "item_id": 48482458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482458", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MapBox[0] does a good job", "excerpt": "MapBox[0] does a good job. I think they use OSM maps. I don\u2019t think it has a public interface, though. It\u2019s really a developer resource. [0] https://mapbox.com", "context": "", "use_case": "Developer maps API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 759730688, "item_id": 47483168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483168", "by": "stevage", "date": "2026-03-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There's no real alternative to mapbox/maplibre/openlayers.", "excerpt": "It depends a lot what kind of thing you're building. If it's a simple marketing website, sure. But any application that does stuff is likely using dependencies that provide a lot of functionality. I make a lot of sites with maps. There's no real alternative to mapbox/maplibre/openlayers.", "context": "", "use_case": "Maps on websites", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Three Pillars of JavaScript Bloat"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "madanosliw", "context": "runs a small consultancy, open to contracting", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927009", "date": "2026-10-01"}, {"by": "digi_wares", "context": "maker of MapMates", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46613043", "date": "2026-01-13"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["maps", "turn-by-turn navigation", "developer maps api", "map frontend", "mapping stack", "maps on websites"], "compared": [{"slug": "next-js", "name": "Next.js", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "react", "name": "React", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "supabase", "name": "Supabase", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "google-maps", "name": "Google Maps", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude", "name": "Claude", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "leaflet", "name": "Leaflet", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vercel", "name": "Vercel", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 756519952, "item_id": 47282497, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282497", "by": "fsloth", "date": "2026-03-06", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "led the implementation effort for our new map feature", "excerpt": "\"Interesting, this is a trap that I've seen multiple senior hires fall into.\" Definetly it's a trap. If you are a purist it's nigh impossible. But if you ruthlessly 80/20 it most stakeholders will be pleasantly surprised. I have no clue why I end up in these situations but I sure do like them. I do realize this would sound more of a perpetual \"not invented here syndrome\" but technical implementation of modeling aspec", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922568", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947", "title": "Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48479452", "title": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085993", "title": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (May 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975571", "title": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47953541", "title": "OpenTrafficMap", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 801068966, "item_id": 50066810, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50066810", "by": "alexandervoigt", "date": "2026-10-13", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Mapbox and GIS", "excerpt": "Location: Charleston, Tennessee, USA Remote: Yes, remote only (US Eastern) Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, React, React Native and Expo (Expo UI, config plugins), native iOS (Objective-C modules, SwiftUI through Expo UI), Next.js, CSS, design systems, Figma, Mapbox and GIS (Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON, GNSS receivers), Claude Code, Codex and Gemini in multi-agent workflows R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://voig", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 798832157, "item_id": 49927009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927009", "by": "madanosliw", "date": "2026-10-01", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Mapbox", "excerpt": "Location: Atlanta, GA, USA Remote: Absolutely Willing to relocate: Probably not Technologies: LLMs (because of course), Ruby/Rails, JavaScript (Node.js, React, Express, Next.js, TypeScript), Python, SQL, Java, PHP, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL, MySQL, PostGIS, Redis, DHIS2, Metabase, ODK, CommCare, Mapbox, Leaflet, Amazon Web Services (EC2, ECS/Fargate, RDS, S3, Lambda, SES, CloudFormation, ElastiCache), Google Cloud (Compu", "context": "runs a small consultancy, open to contracting", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 792052576, "item_id": 49503286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503286", "by": "cwillu", "date": "2026-08-30", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM.", "excerpt": "I use mapbox for turn-by-turn for hours a day every day, and it's based on OSM. Bonus: when something is fucky, I can actually generally get it fixed, unlike google which continues to report an 80kph speed limit in various residential streets and school zones in my city.", "context": "", "use_case": "turn-by-turn navigation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps"}, {"id": 775719328, "item_id": 48482458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482458", "by": "ChrisMarshallNY", "date": "2026-06-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MapBox[0] does a good job", "excerpt": "MapBox[0] does a good job. I think they use OSM maps. I don\u2019t think it has a public interface, though. It\u2019s really a developer resource. [0] https://mapbox.com", "context": "", "use_case": "Developer maps API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it"}, {"id": 769423969, "item_id": 48088998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088998", "by": "motoroco", "date": "2026-05-10", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m using Mapbox for the frontend", "excerpt": "I wanted a faster, easier mapping app to plan motorcycle rides for myself and with groups, so I finally bit the bullet and started building my own at the beginning of this year. I got to the MVP state which was useful for my personal use case in about a month. I took it further than that as a learning exercise and as a means to share it with others. Some features that came later are live cursors (like Figma), elevati", "context": "", "use_case": "map frontend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 768425312, "item_id": 48026582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48026582", "by": "tautyshalna", "date": "2026-05-05", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "TypeScript, serverless AWS, React + Ionic, Mapbox.", "excerpt": "AutoPylot | Founding Engineer | REMOTE (US)(East Coast Preferred) | $125K to $185K + Equity FAA authorized drone flight planning platform. Real revenue, real users, real infrastructure interfacing with federal aviation systems. One of the largest LAANC providers in the U.S. Looking for engineer #1 to own the full stack. TypeScript, serverless AWS, React + Ionic, Mapbox. You'd work directly with the founder and have m", "context": "", "use_case": "Mapping stack", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2026)"}, {"id": 767311984, "item_id": 47956999, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47956999", "by": "pxeboot", "date": "2026-04-29", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "While a free tier is available, most sites are going to need a paid plan.", "excerpt": "It looks like Mapbox Standard [1]. While a free tier is available, most sites are going to need a paid plan. [1] https://docs.mapbox.com/map-styles/standard/guides/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenTrafficMap"}, {"id": 763401172, "item_id": 47712573, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47712573", "by": "rdeadvisors", "date": "2026-04-09", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Mapbox", "excerpt": "RDE Advisors | Senior Full-Stack Engineer | REMOTE (Europe, LatAm, India) | CONTRACT | $4K\u20136K USD/mo We're a boutique commercial real estate advisory in NYC building two production web applications: a CRE search platform and a property management platform with QuickBooks integration. Both are live with real users. Stack is Next.js 14, TypeScript, Supabase/Postgres, Prisma, Anthropic Claude API, Mapbox, Vercel + Conta", "context": "", "use_case": "Maps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 763149346, "item_id": 47696834, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47696834", "by": "Doohickey-d", "date": "2026-04-08", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "I think Mapbox also provides a similar looking basemap style", "excerpt": "Looks like it's using leaflet + map tiles from https://carto.com/ I think Mapbox also provides a similar looking basemap style.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Is Hormuz Open Yet?"}, {"id": 759730688, "item_id": 47483168, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483168", "by": "stevage", "date": "2026-03-22", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There's no real alternative to mapbox/maplibre/openlayers.", "excerpt": "It depends a lot what kind of thing you're building. If it's a simple marketing website, sure. But any application that does stuff is likely using dependencies that provide a lot of functionality. I make a lot of sites with maps. There's no real alternative to mapbox/maplibre/openlayers.", "context": "", "use_case": "Maps on websites", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Three Pillars of JavaScript Bloat"}, {"id": 746181729, "item_id": 46636358, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46636358", "by": "wcallahan", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "So I use Apple Maps, Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, and Google Maps", "excerpt": "I do a lot of maps API calls, and found I get better results (and can save money) by using multiple providers. So I use Apple Maps, Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, and Google Maps\u2026 sometimes to check the results with multiple providers, and sometimes to divvy up the free allotment. For anyone using Java/Kotlin/JVM, I made an SDK for Apple Maps: https://github.com/WilliamAGH/apple-maps-java which is one with a generous include", "context": "", "use_case": "maps API calls", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why NUKEMAP isn't on Google Maps anymore"}, {"id": 745808691, "item_id": 46613043, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46613043", "by": "digi_wares", "date": "2026-01-13", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Built with Next.js, Supabase, and Mapbox.", "excerpt": "Hi HN, maker here. I built MapMates because I moved to Bangkok and realized how hard it is to find your people when you're new somewhere. LinkedIn felt too formal, dating apps weren't right, and Facebook groups are just noise. The idea is simple: drop a pin where you are, say what you do (founder, developer, designer, etc.), and see who else is nearby. If someone looks interesting, send a connection request with a me", "context": "maker of MapMates", "use_case": "maps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: MapMates \u2013 A map for expats to find people in new cities"}, {"id": 744493331, "item_id": 46530833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46530833", "by": "freemanjiang", "date": "2026-01-07", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "deck.gl w/ Mapbox for GPU-accelerated rendering", "excerpt": "Each moving arrow represents one real bike ride out of 291 million, and if you've ever taken a Citi Bike before, you are included in this massive visualization! You can search for your ride using Cmd + K and your Citi Bike receipt, which should give you the time of your ride and start/end station. Everything is open source: https://github.com/freemanjiang/bikemap Some technical details: - No backend! Processed data i", "context": "", "use_case": "base map", "switched_from": "", "story": "I visualized the entire history of Citi Bike in the browser"}, {"id": 742969218, "item_id": 46435576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435576", "by": "threethirtytwo", "date": "2025-12-30", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It uses mapbox and deckgl", "excerpt": "People are sharing it. Look at this entire thread. It\u2019s so conflicted. We have half the thread saying it\u2019s 5x and the other half saying they\u2019re delusional and lack critical thinking. I think it\u2019s obvious who lacks critical thinking. If half the thread is saying on the ground AI has changed things and the other half just labels everyone as crazy without investigation\u2026 guess which one didn\u2019t do any critical thinking? L", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Software Development Is Software Developers"}, {"id": 742604433, "item_id": 46412777, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46412777", "by": "packet_mover", "date": "2025-12-28", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "they do support offline use cases, but the typical path is SDK-first", "excerpt": "A bit more context on why I built this and how it differs from common options: Goal: treat maps/routing/search like a local appliance. Once the dataset is on the device, there are no external map/routing/geocoding API calls. After the initial Docker pulls, you can unplug WAN and still browse tiles, route A\u2192B, and search/reverse-geocode locally. It\u2019s packaged behind a single local gateway/port so any app on the LAN ca", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack"}, {"id": 733929552, "item_id": 45870597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45870597", "by": "heyitssim", "date": "2025-11-09", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Now trying to make maps look a bit nicer with mapbox.", "excerpt": "building a location-based game that captures Taiwan's absurd convenience stores density[1]. Players stand at any 7-11/FamilyMart/etc, take a photo showing you can see the next store, walk to it, repeat. Chain as many stores together as you can. It sounds silly but Taiwan really is this convenient - you often can see 2-3 stores from one spot. Here[2] one route where you can actually link 7 convenience stores in a row!", "context": "", "use_case": "Map styling for game", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"}]}