Migrate from Esri
to CARTO
The real cost of Esri rarely appears on one budget line. Across both SaaS and Self-Hosted deployments, CARTO significantly reduces what enterprises actually pay and eliminates the hidden costs underneath.
Take the migration assessmentTotal cost of ownership
The real cost of Esri rarely appears on one budget line. Across both SaaS and Self-Hosted deployments, CARTO significantly reduces what enterprises actually pay and eliminates the hidden costs underneath.
What changes for your team and organization
Your data never moves
CARTO queries your data exactly where it already lives in your cloud warehouse. No ETL pipelines, no data copies, no costly storage bill. Your existing access controls and audit logs apply without any changes on your side.
Your GIS expertise scales
AI Agents surface spatial answers for every team. You build repeatable and scalable spatial workflows and expose them to train agents to automate and scale geospatial expertise across the organization.
Reduce total cost of ownership
CARTO replaces your GIS platform, data pipeline tooling, and third-party data subscriptions in one. Predictable pricing. One renewal conversation.
Expert guidance at every step
CARTO's geospatial experts and solutions engineers work alongside you from readiness assessment through production. Deep technical guidance at every stage so your migration moves forward.
Esri migration readiness assessment
Answer a few questions about your current ArcGIS setup, data, and team, and get a personalized read on your migration path, effort, and cost.
From Esri architecture to cloud-native
ArcGIS requires data duplication. CARTO connects natively to your existing data warehouse, inheriting your enterprise-ready data governance and security policies. Spatial data and business data have traditionally lived in separate systems. CARTO brings them together.
ArcGIS Architecture
CARTO Architecture
Built for every person in the Esri conversation
From the CTO signing the budget to the GIS analyst who uses it every day. CARTO answers a different question for each.
Analytics Leader
Esri charges per seat and per core. CARTO runs inside your cloud warehouse. No spatial silo, no per-seat model. Cost grows with cloud consumption, not headcount.
GIS Professional
Same analytical depth, in the cloud. Every map becomes a self-service tool anyone can explore with AI Agents surfacing answers in real time.
Business User
CARTO puts interactive maps and AI-powered spatial analysis directly in your hands. Ask questions in plain language, explore results yourself, and share findings with your team. No GIS specialist required.
Data Analyst
Build spatial workflows in drag-and-drop or SQL. Publish interactive maps, embed in BI tools, or send automated alerts. All inside your cloud stack.
Data Scientist
H3 aggregation, isochrones, spatial joins — scheduled and versioned inside your ML pipeline. No separate infrastructure, no spatial silo.
IT and Security
CARTO is SOC 2 Type II certified and runs in your cloud VPC. Data never moves. Your existing IAM policies, audit logs, and DLP controls apply without modification.
A proven migration and support process
Migrations stall for predictable reasons. CARTO's team of geospatial experts has experience supporting every stage of the process.
Migration readiness assessment
Map your Esri footprint, identify data location, and scope the ecosystem. If your data is already in a cloud data warehouse, the most complex phase is eliminated entirely.
Validate critical use cases first
Confirm CARTO delivers your non-negotiable workflows before you deprecate any Esri licences. We will tell you clearly if something is out of scope.
Map total cost of ownership
Inventory Esri infrastructure costs, spatial pipeline tooling, and third-party data costs together. The full picture is often more compelling than the licence cost alone.
Connect data warehouse and SSO
CARTO connects natively to your warehouse. Your data stays where it is. SSO runs in parallel; involving your identity admin early prevents the most common deployment stall.
Deploy with the right people in the room
Analyst owning the use case, SSO admin, cloud admin, and budget owner. All four, before we build. Every stalled deployment was missing at least one.
Achieve first impact
Your first use case goes live with real users and real data. We measure results together and establish the baseline for expanding CARTO across your organization.
Customer reported outcomes
Get inspired by our customers
With CARTO's AI Agents, predictive growth insights move beyond data analysts and into the hands of every decision-maker. Now, anyone can ask our data questions like 'Which neighborhoods will grow fastest?' and get instant answers - speeding up site planning and providing a real competitive edge.
Questions we hear from every Esri migration
Our GIS team has used ArcGIS for 15 years. They are not going to change.
The teams most resistant to change are usually the ones who have invested the most in making the current platform work well. CARTO is not a demand to start over. It is a path to run existing workflows where your data already lives, at the scale ArcGIS cannot reach. Most GIS professionals find it expands what they can deliver, rather than replacing what they know.
We have years of ArcPy scripts and ModelBuilder workflows. What happens to them?
They keep running in ArcGIS while you migrate. CARTO does not require a full cutover on day one. Most migrations start with one use case, run both platforms in parallel, and deprecate ArcGIS licences as CARTO proves results.
Data governance is non-negotiable. We cannot move data to another platform.
CARTO is the platform that does not require your data to move. ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise both require data to leave your cloud warehouse. CARTO queries it where it already lives; your access controls, encryption, and audit logs apply without modification.
What if CARTO cannot do something we currently do in ArcGIS?
We tell you before you commit. CARTO has real limitations: desktop cartographic output, complex imagery and LiDAR analysis, and offline field operations are areas where Esri continues to lead. If those are your primary needs, we will say so during the readiness assessment.
We have tried migrations before. They always stall after the demo.
The most common reason is not the technology; it is that the person who ran the evaluation cannot access the production database, cannot configure SSO, and has no authority to move quickly. Before we begin, we identify four contacts and confirm all four are available. Every stalled deployment was missing at least one.
What are the performance and cost implications of CARTO's no-ETL approach versus Esri's data syncing requirements?
CARTO's no-ETL approach eliminates data duplication, significantly reducing costs associated with data storage and management. It also improves performance by allowing you to work with the most up-to-date data directly in your data warehouse. Esri's reliance on data syncing and imports can be time-consuming, costly, and can lead to data silos and versioning issues.
How does CARTO's security and governance approach differ from Esri's?
CARTO inherits the robust security and governance features of your cloud data warehouse, ensuring that your data remains secure and compliant. Your existing access controls, encryption, and audit logging apply without modification. Esri's hybrid architecture can create additional security complexities, and managing security across different environments can be a challenge.
