At a glance
The short version, row by row. The Waymorphic column is the same on every comparison.
| Waymorphic Map | hosting your own tiles | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Waymorphic MapFree. No plan, no quota set in advance, no invoice. | Self-hostingA server, its bandwidth, a CDN if you want one, and the hours to build, monitor and update it. |
| API key | Waymorphic MapNone. A style URL is the whole setup. | Self-hostingWhatever you decide. |
| Usage limits | Waymorphic MapFair use: normal maps in browsers and apps. Bulk downloads and scraping are blocked. | Self-hostingWhatever your hardware and bandwidth allow. |
| Commercial use | Waymorphic MapYes. Personal, commercial, public sector, hobby. | Self-hostingYes; it is yours. |
| Map data | Waymorphic MapOpenStreetMap, in the OpenMapTiles schema, refreshed from new planet builds. | Self-hostingOpenStreetMap, built with Planetiler (a planet build takes a machine with plenty of RAM a few hours) or downloaded as a ready PMTiles file. |
| Styles | Waymorphic MapFive: Positron, Bright, Liberty, Dark and Fiord. Any MapLibre style written for the OpenMapTiles schema also works. | Self-hostingAny OpenMapTiles style, including the same five, all open source. |
| Coverage | Waymorphic MapThe whole planet, zoom 0 to 14 (the tiles overzoom cleanly to street level). | Self-hostingAny extract at any zoom you choose to build. |
| Works with | Waymorphic MapMapLibre GL JS, MapLibre Native, Leaflet with a plugin, QGIS, anything that reads a MapLibre style or TileJSON. | Self-hostingThe same clients: MapLibre, Leaflet, QGIS, native SDKs. |
| Self-hosting | Waymorphic MapNot this service itself: it is not open source. But it is built from open-source parts and follows open formats, so you can run a compatible server of your own that answers the same URLs. | Self-hostingThat is the point. |
| Beyond the basemap | Waymorphic MapTiles, styles, fonts, sprites and shaded relief, plus search, address lookup and place lookups, all free and keyless. No routing; the examples show free public services for that. | Self-hostingWhatever you add: your own layers, geocoding, routing, offline packages. |
| Support | Waymorphic MapBest effort. It is fast and stable, but there is no contract or uptime guarantee. | Self-hostingYou. |
Where hosting your own tiles is the better choice
The honest list. If one of these is what you need, this is not the page that talks you out of it.
- Control and privacy
No third party sees your users' requests, no dependency on a free service staying free, and a version pinned for as long as you like.
- Offline, intranet and edge
A map that has to work without the internet, inside a company network or on a device is a self-hosted map by definition.
- Your own data and zoom
Build zoom 15 or 16 for one city, add your own layers into the tiles, use a schema of your own.
- Very heavy traffic
At some scale it is cheaper and fairer to pay for your own bandwidth than to lean on a free host.
Where Waymorphic Map fits
What you gain by pointing the map here instead.
- Nothing to run
No server to patch, no disk to fill, no build to rerun when the planet changes, no CDN rules to write.
- Fast from day one
A global CDN and a warm cache. A single server of your own is fast for the people near it.
- Free
A small server and a CDN cost money every month, and a planet build needs a machine with a lot of memory for a few hours.
- A compatible server, when you are ready
Start on Waymorphic Map. If you outgrow it, build your own from the same open-source parts, keep the same styles and URL layout, and change the domain in your code.
How to switch
Moving from your own server to Waymorphic Map, or back, is a domain change if you keep the OpenFreeMap-style URL layout that Waymorphic Map uses. Serving a PMTiles file yourself needs a server that answers range requests, such as go-pmtiles, or object storage with the PMTiles protocol in the browser.
const map = new maplibregl.Map({
container: 'map',
style: 'https://tiles.example.com/styles/positron',
center: [13.405, 52.52],
zoom: 12,
});const map = new maplibregl.Map({
container: 'map',
style: 'https://tiles.waymorphic.com/styles/positron',
center: [13.405, 52.52],
zoom: 12,
});- The pieces: Planetiler to build, go-pmtiles to serve the archive, the OpenMapTiles styles, and OpenFreeMap's self-hosting guide for the whole recipe.
- A style JSON is portable: its source URL, glyphs and sprite are the only lines that name a host.
- For the hosted-file route with no server, see the Protomaps comparison.
Questions and answers
How much does self-hosting really cost?
For a planet: a build machine with tens of gigabytes of RAM for a few hours, around 100 GB of disk for the archive, and a server with enough bandwidth for your traffic, plus a CDN if your users are spread out. For a single city, much less.
Is Waymorphic Map open source?
No, the service itself is not. The parts it is built from are, and its URL layout follows OpenFreeMap's, so you can build a compatible server from OpenFreeMap's self-hosting guide and the same open-source tools. A style written for one runs on the other.
Will Waymorphic Map stay free?
That is the plan and the point: the free tier is the product, not a trial. It is best effort, and if you cannot accept that, self-hosting is the honest alternative.