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MapServer

Open-source platform for publishing spatial data

Maps & GIS ★ 1.2k stars Hard setup MIT

MapServer is a long-standing open-source platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications on the web. It renders maps on the fly from geospatial datasets and serves OGC web services.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • On-the-fly map rendering
  • OGC web services
  • Geospatial data publishing
  • Mature and stable

Strengths

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Active community (1.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM

Is MapServer secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect MapServer's latest release (rel-8-6-6). OSV.dev lists 15 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2026-54354, published 2026-09-17 (27 days ago), fixed in 8.6.4

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

MapServer replaces

Self-hosted ArcGIS Server alternativesSelf-hosted Google Maps Platform alternatives

Health badge

Maintain MapServer? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 87 · excellent

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[![SelfHostIndex health score for MapServer](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/mapserver-cgi.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/mapserver-cgi/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/mapserver-cgi/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/mapserver-cgi.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for MapServer"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/mapserver-cgi.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for MapServer
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/mapserver-cgi/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

Compare MapServer

3 head-to-head comparisons.

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