Martin vs Tegola
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted maps & gis options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Martin | Tegola |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 89 · Excellent | 69 · Good |
| Category | Maps & GIS | Maps & GIS |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,939 | ★ 1,505 |
| First released | 2018 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Mapbox | Mapbox, Tilehosting |
What are Martin and Tegola?
Martin
Martin is a high-performance vector tile server that serves tiles directly from PostGIS databases, PMTiles, and MBTiles files. It powers fast, dynamic map serving with minimal configuration.
- PostGIS tile serving
- PMTiles and MBTiles support
- Auto-discovery of sources
- High performance
Tegola
Tegola is an open-source vector tile server that generates Mapbox Vector Tiles from PostGIS and other spatial data sources. It serves fast, styleable maps to web and mobile clients.
- Mapbox Vector Tile output
- PostGIS data source
- Tile caching
- Single-binary deploy
Martin vs Tegola: key differences
Martin is written in Rust, while Tegola is built with Go. Tegola is the more established project (first released 2016), while Martin arrived in 2018. Martin has the considerably larger community, at 3,939 GitHub stars versus 1,505.
Why pick each one
Choose Martin if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.9k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
Choose Tegola if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.5k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Frequently asked questions
Is Martin or Tegola better?
Neither is universally better. Martin has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Martin and Tegola free and open-source?
Yes. Martin is licensed under MIT and Tegola under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Martin and Tegola with Docker?
Martin: yes. Tegola: yes.