deck.gl vs Protomaps
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?
deck.gl
WebGL-powered framework for large-scale data visualization on maps
VS
Protomaps
Serverless maps from a single PMTiles archive
| Feature | deck.gl | Protomaps |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Maps & GIS | Maps & GIS |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | source | binary, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 14,360 | ★ 2,980 |
| First released | 2016 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Mapbox visualization, ArcGIS | Mapbox, Google Maps |
Why pick each one
Choose deck.gl if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Mature project with 14.4k GitHub stars
- Written in TypeScript
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Choose Protomaps if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Active community (3k GitHub stars)
- Written in TypeScript
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is deck.gl or Protomaps better?
Neither is universally better. deck.gl has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are deck.gl and Protomaps free and open-source?
Yes. deck.gl is licensed under MIT and Protomaps under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run deck.gl and Protomaps with Docker?
deck.gl: check the project docs for container support. Protomaps: check the project docs for container support.