Looking for an alternative to Mapbox?

CARTO is the leading spatial analytics platform for cloud natives. See why modern spatial app developers are making the switch.

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Fully cloud native

Connect directly to your data warehouse and deploy on-demand spatial applications, with all data stored within your existing cloud data infrastructure.

Cost effective tiling

CARTO is a powerful solution to visualize & analyze geospatial data at scale. Render massive amounts of spatial data efficiently, and cost effectively.

Scalable development

Create map tiles using native data warehouse resources with no limits on scalability. Build performant spatial applications using any JavaScript framework.

Why choose CARTO over Mapbox?

CARTO vs Mapbox at a glance

The leading cloud-native geospatial analytics platform for teams of all sizes.

Location technology for automakers, mobile app developers, and logistics services.

Connectivity
CARTO

Direct cloud connections with no limitations on multiple data warehouses. All queries are run natively on the data warehouse, and no data is stored in CARTO.

Alteryx

Mapbox does not connect natively to cloud data warehouses. Data must be uploaded into Mapbox, by UI or API, for processing and analysis.

Data

CARTO

CARTO Data Observatory provides over 12,000 public and premium datasets from a variety of vetted data providers, including boundaries, demographics, points of interest and more.

Alteryx

Boundary data to support map tiling (political, statistical, state, county, city and zip code). Human mobility and traffic movement data.

Spatial Analysis
CARTO

Analysis is run natively using Spatial SQL directly in the cloud data warehouse environment, using our comprehensive Analytics Toolbox.

Alteryx

Limited spatial operations, for data transformation, conversion and measurement through an integration with Turf.js.

Visualization Libraries
CARTO

CARTO uses deck.gl, a powerful open source visualization library. CARTO is the principal contributor to the project, and our technical leadership forms part of the deck.gl steering committee.

Alteryx

MapboxGL uses a closed source, proprietary visualization library for creating map based applications.

Javascript Integrations
CARTO

Develop spatial applications using CARTO with any JavaScript framework (Angular, Vue, React…), or vanilla JavaScript/Typescript.

Alteryx

Mapbox integrates with Angular, Vue, React, Ember, and vanilla JavaScript.

Static Map Tiling
CARTO

Create static map tiles natively in your data warehouse using SQL, or in the CARTO Workspace UI. Render tiles on the fly in CARTO Builder. Vector tile support and no server callback. Flexible controls for maximum tile size and feature dropping schema for high zoom levels.

Alteryx

Create static map tiles using data files uploaded to Mapbox's Tiling Service, tiles generated via Tippecanoe, other tiling services locally, or in a cloud compute environment. Interact with the tiling service via API or the Mapbox CLI.

Dynamic Map Tiling
CARTO

Map tiles are generated dynamically based on a query passed to your cloud data warehouse.

Alteryx

Not available.

Map Tiling - Spatial Indexes
CARTO

Create static or dynamic tiles using only spatial index data such as H3 or Quadbin. Handles automatic index aggregation on the client side.

Alteryx

Not available.

Static Map Tiling - Data Limits
CARTO

No limits on data size in storage or number of features. Some limits pertaining to CPU configuration within the data warehouse for large geometries. Most limits can be overcome with other tiling methods such as intelligent feature dropping.

Alteryx

Data sources (or layers) cannot exceed 20GB individually, or exceed 50GB in total for one tiled layer. The size of a single vector tile is limited to 500 KB.‍

Dynamic Map Tiling - Data Limits
CARTO

No known limits. Current examples in production with more than 2.7 billion features.

Alteryx

Not available.

Static Map Tiling - Run Time & Cost
CARTO

For an OpenStreetMap building polygons tileset (approx 400 million features).

Single run processing time: 8 minutes 13 seconds.

$0.13 cost of processing data in BigQuery (150GB in total).

Annual cost: $6.24 (Excluding licenses for the example tileset)

Alteryx

For an OpenStreetMap building polygons tileset (approx 400 million features).

Estimated single run processing time: 89 hours.

~$1,600 cost of processing data (up to zoom 16) for a single run.

Annual cost: $77,592 (for the example tileset).

Cloud-native
CARTO

Fully cloud-native with serverless connections and deployment.

Alteryx

SaaS only offering, except for specific map styling and offline map hosting using Mapbox Atlas.

Deployment
CARTO

SaaS or self-hosted options deployed with Docker Compose or Kubernetes. Cloud Marketplaces are supported.

Alteryx

Cloud SaaS offering for most services. Map styling and offline map hosting with Mapbox Atlas. Deployed via Docker Compose or Kubernetes.

Vendor Lock In
CARTO

Data is not stored in CARTO, only returned via API. You control all data in your data warehouse. Flexible Enterprise pricing plans, with all inclusive pricing.

Alteryx

Hosted and generated tiles cannot be exported out of Mapbox.

API
CARTO

Single API layer used in all platform products.

Alteryx

API based product. Several APIs to interact with different Mapbox components.

Rapidly carry out spatial analysis

Data Analysts starting out in location analytics or Data Scientists creating machine-learning models can use the CARTO platform to speed up insight generation. Workflows let you design, execute and automate analytics using a visual, no-code tool. Run advanced cloud-native analysis with our comprehensive Analytics Toolbox.

Easily connect your spatial data

CARTO integrates natively with the leading cloud data platforms and analytics tools, including Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Databricks.

CARTO Builder for geospatial analysis

Build powerful Location Intelligence apps & visualizations

Visualization shouldn’t just be pretty maps, it should answer a business question. With CARTO, you can rapidly build Location Intelligence apps using our developer resources and templates. Our cloud native Dynamic Tiling technology provides a cost-effective and performant solution for visualizing spatial data at scale.

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Access more than 12,000 geospatial datasets

Our Data Observatory makes it simple for enterprise organizations to access thousands of "always-on" public & premium datasets, enhancing their spatial analysis with data such as demographics, POIs, human mobility, financial and much more.

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Get inspired by our customers

“CARTO makes map making easy. I can quickly pull the data in, get it on a map, do some light SQL & then share. Collaboration is easy & within a couple of hours we can have a really great visual product to share with decision-makers.”

Jason McVay from Indigo
Jason McVay
Associate Data Scientist at Indigo Ag
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“CARTO’s Location Intelligence platform lets us visualize massive sets of data hosted in Google BigQuery. Thanks to this cloud-native approach to spatial analytics, we have overcome challenges related to scalability and security, and can serve our customers even better."

Seamus Abshere from Faraday
Seamus Abshere
CTO & Co-founder of Faraday
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“Using CARTO has enabled us to analyze service qualification at a much larger scale due to its comprehensive support for a wide range of functions and libraries including spatial indexes. This is a gamechanger, modernizing our GIS stack.”

Kendra Lord
Kendra Lord
Director of Geospatial Engineering & Analytics at T-Mobile
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You're in good company

Market leaders rely on CARTO to solve spatial problems.

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Move from seeing where to understanding why.