Guide

MapLibre vs Leaflet vs OpenLayers

The three open-source libraries for maps in a web page, compared on how they draw, vector tiles, 3D, projections, data formats and download size, with the same map drawn by each. The figures are from 2 November 2026.

In short:

MapLibre GL JS when the base map matters: vector styles, smooth zoom, tilt, 3D terrain and a globe. It needs WebGL 2 and is the largest download.
Leaflet for markers, popups and shapes on a base map, with many plugins, in the smallest download. Vector tiles need a plugin.
OpenLayers for GIS work: many formats and map services, any projection, drawing and editing built in.

Side by side

	MapLibre GL JS	Leaflet	OpenLayers
Latest version	6.16.0, 25 Oct 2026	1.9.4, 18 May 2023; 2.0.0-beta.1 on 2 Nov 2026	10.11.0, 4 Oct 2026
npm downloads, 26 Oct to 1 Nov 2026	9.1 million	10.9 million	1.2 million
Licence	BSD-3-Clause	BSD-2-Clause	BSD-2-Clause
Draws with	WebGL 2	Image tiles, with SVG or canvas for shapes	Canvas 2D, WebGL for some layers
Vector tiles with a style	Built in	Through a plugin	Built in; MapLibre styles through ol-mapbox-style
Tilt and 3D terrain	Yes	No	No
Rotation	Yes	No	Yes
Projections	Web Mercator and a globe	Web Mercator; others with Proj4Leaflet	Any projection that proj4 defines; image layers are reprojected
Data formats	GeoJSON, vector and raster tiles, images, video	GeoJSON and WMS; others through plugins	GeoJSON, KML, GPX, GML, TopoJSON, WKT, WFS, WMS, WMTS, GeoTIFF and more
Drawing and editing	Through plugins	Through plugins	Built in
TypeScript types	Included	In `@types/leaflet`	Included

Versions, dates, licences and downloads from the npm registry. The npm downloads count every install, also through other packages such as react-map-gl.

The same map in each

Our light style over Zurich, drawn by each library from the same vector tiles:

Zurich in the light style, drawn by MapLibre: icons for the station, ETH and university, many street names — MapLibre GL JS 6.16: the style as it is made, with icons and street names. Leaflet with maplibre-gl-leaflet shows the same picture, since MapLibre draws it.

The same view drawn by OpenLayers: the icons sit on their labels and fewer streets are named — OpenLayers 10.11 with ol-mapbox-style 13.9: the same colours; icons sit on their labels, and fewer streets are named.

The same view drawn by protomaps-leaflet: no icons, few labels, finer lines — Leaflet 1.9.4 with protomaps-leaflet 5.1: its own version of the light style, without icons, and without WebGL.

Download size

A minimal map	JavaScript, gzip
Leaflet with image tiles	41 KB
OpenLayers with image tiles, bundled	66 KB
Leaflet with protomaps-leaflet	77 KB
OpenLayers with ol-mapbox-style, bundled with Vite	151 KB
Leaflet with maplibre-gl-leaflet and MapLibre 5	311 KB
MapLibre GL JS 6.16, bundled with Vite	282 KB, and 143 KB for the worker

Measured on the minified files from npm, or on a build of a page with one map, compressed with gzip -9. Image tiles are pictures from a tile server; overpass.ch serves vector tiles only.

MapLibre GL JS

MapLibre began in December 2020 as a fork of Mapbox GL JS 1.13, and draws the whole map on the graphics card: zoom and rotation are smooth, and the map tilts to show 3D terrain and buildings. A style describes all of it in one JSON file, so changing the colours or the language of the labels needs no new tiles. MapLibre 6 needs WebGL 2 and comes as ES modules only. Our styles are made for it.

MapLibre GL JS tutorial: your first map

Leaflet

Leaflet puts image tiles in a grid and markers, popups and shapes on top, with SVG or canvas. Its plugins cover clustering, heat maps, drawing, routing and much else. It has no renderer for vector tiles: maplibre-gl-leaflet puts a MapLibre map into Leaflet as a layer, and protomaps-leaflet draws the Protomaps tiles on canvas. Leaflet 2.0 is in beta: it comes as ES modules, and new Marker(…) replaces L.marker(…).

Vector map tiles in Leaflet

OpenLayers

OpenLayers reads most GIS formats and services itself, works in any projection that proj4 defines, and has tools to draw, modify and snap features. It draws vector tiles on canvas, and ol-mapbox-style turns a MapLibre style into OpenLayers styles; some parts of the style specification are missing, so not every style looks as in MapLibre. For those, MapLibre can draw the base map as an OpenLayers layer.

Vector map tiles in OpenLayers

Moving from Leaflet to MapLibre

Coordinates turn around: Leaflet takes [latitude, longitude], MapLibre and GeoJSON [longitude, latitude].
Zoom levels differ by one: MapLibre zoom 12 shows the area of Leaflet zoom 13.
L.marker becomes maplibregl.Marker, bindPopup becomes setPopup, and GeoJSON layers become a source and a layer of the style.

The tiles

All three show the vector tiles and styles of overpass.ch with one style URL and one key. Every account includes 100'000 map tiles a month; the map tiles page has the styles on a live map and the prices.

Get a free API key See the map styles