Headway vs Mapnik
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted maps & gis options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Headway
Self-hostable maps stack you can run yourself
VS
Mapnik
Toolkit for rendering raster map tiles from spatial data
| Feature | Headway | Mapnik |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Maps & GIS | Maps & GIS |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Language | Rust | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 8,192 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,957 | ★ 3,949 |
| First released | 2022 | 2006 |
| Replaces | Google Maps | Google Maps, Mapbox |
Why pick each one
Choose Headway if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
Choose Mapnik if…
- Released under the LGPL-2.1 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.9k GitHub stars)
- Written in C++
Frequently asked questions
Is Headway or Mapnik better?
Neither is universally better. Mapnik has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Headway and Mapnik free and open-source?
Yes. Headway is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Mapnik under LGPL-2.1. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Headway and Mapnik with Docker?
Headway: yes. Mapnik: yes.