Getting Started
Welcome to Mapbox! This guide provides a high-level overview of our core products and tools, along with the essential steps and resources to start building powerful, location-based applications.
What is Mapbox?
Mapbox is a modern location platform that gives developers the building blocks to add maps, navigation, and search to their applications. Use Mapbox APIs, libraries, SDKs, and powerful tools like Mapbox Studio to create customized, high-performance geospatial experiences for web, mobile, gaming, and embedded systems.
Mapbox provides flexible, reliable, and scalable geospatial services and software, designed for developers by developers. With Mapbox, every developer can be a spatial developer.
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Platform overview
Mapbox provides a modular platform made up of APIs, SDKs, and tools that developers can combine to build fully custom location experiences. The Mapbox product offering is divided into four main categories:
Try our developer cheat sheet for a visual catalog of our product offering
Maps
Maps are the foundation of the Mapbox platform. Mapbox provides a wide range of mapping products, including interactive maps, static maps, and custom map styles, all built upon the core global datasets that are continuously updated and maintained as part of the Mapbox platform.
Mapbox GL JS and the Maps SDKs for iOS and Android are client-side packages for rendering high-performance interactive maps in web and mobile applications. They support advanced features like 3D terrain, vector tiles, and dynamic styling, and allow for full control of interactivity and user experience.
The Maps APIs provide programmatic access to map data, useful for managing map data and building custom map experiences.
Map Developer Journey
Rendering an interactive map with some kind of custom data and user interactions is the most common workflow for developers getting started with Mapbox. The journey below walks through these steps, with helpful links to documentation and resources along the way.
Follow the Map Developer Journey
Learn more about Mapbox Maps products:
Search
Mapbox Search products provide geocoding, reverse geocoding, and point-of-interest search capabilities for application developers.
The frontend search libraries and SDKs include drop-in UI and make it easy to add search functionality to applications. The Mapbox Search APIs provide programmatic access to search data for building custom search experiences.
Learn more about Mapbox Search products:
Navigation
The Navigation SDKs for iOS and Android provide interactive turn-by-turn navigation, route optimization, and real-time traffic data. They include drop-in User Interface components for quick integration, and also allow for full styling and customization of the navigation experience in mobile applications or embedded systems like automotive dashboard displays.
The Navigation APIs provide programmatic access to routing, traffic, and navigation data. This includes the Directions API for turn-by-turn navigation, the Isochrone API for travel time analysis, and the Map Matching API for snapping GPS traces to roads.
Learn more about Mapbox Navigation products:
Data products
Mapbox data products provide premium datasets for data analysis and visualization, including datasets for current and typical traffic patterns, aggregated movement patterns, and boundaries (administrative, statistical, political, and postal).
See the documentation landing page for a list of all Mapbox data products.
Understand pricing
Mapbox offers a developer-centric pricing model that starts with free tiers for most products and transitions to metered services based on usage. Read more about our per-product pricing here.
For personalized solutions and to learn about annual payment discounts and other options, start a conversation with our sales team.
Manage your account
The Mapbox Developer Console is your central hub for managing your Mapbox account. Here, you can create and manage access tokens, view usage statistics, and configure billing settings. The console is also where you can create and manage your map styles and datasets, and access the Mapbox Studio map design tool.
Get inspired
Find inspiration for a wide range of Mapbox-powered use cases and applications with the following resources:
- Read the Mapbox blog to learn about new features and products.
- See the customer showcase to see how companies across various industries use Mapbox.
- Join a live webinar to learn more about specific products and use cases, or browse past webinars on our YouTube channel.
- Follow us on X, Instagram, BlueSky, and LinkedIn for product updates, tips, and inspiration.
- Browse the interactive Mapbox GL JS examples and accompanying code snippets to see what's possible with Mapbox maps on the web. (Most of these examples are portable to mobile platforms as well.)
- Examples apps are available for the Maps SDKs for iOS and Android to show off individual features and capabilities of the SDKs.
Get help
If you have questions about your account, billing or email verification issues, you can create a support ticket.
If you are experiencing technical issues while implementing Mapbox, we offer paid plans which allow you to create tickets and contact our technical support team directly.
You can also find helpful resources, tutorials, and FAQs in our help docs. You can post questions on Stack Overflow or in our Mapbox Developer Discord to seek help from the broader community of Mapbox developers.