Vector Tiles are deployed on OpenStreetMap.org
66 comments
·July 22, 2025ikawe
stevage
>Vector tiles are not new technology.
Yeah, it really is not. Mapbox Vector Tiles spec came out in 2014, and they've been absolutely standard across all (non-government) web mapping for at least the last 5 years.
gregoriol
Indeed almost everyone except Apple's MapKit library for in-app native maps integration is using vector these days.
hopelite
Could you explain why you say that? My understanding is that rasterized tiles are only a graceful degradation when necessary in MapKit, while vector is default, as the behavior and experience would indicate.
showcaseearth
+1. Google launched their (proprietary) vector tiles in 2013 as well, and I'd even argue that vector has been the standard well over 5 years now.
awkward
Tiles aren't just about data selection, they're also about caching. By turning a continuous domain (any part of the world at any scale) into a series of discrete requests (a grid of tiles at several fixed scales), maps become a series of cacheable requests.
stevage
For anyone who wants to actually try the new layer, it's called "Shortbread" and can be accessed under the layers selector. Or use this link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map&layers=S
The blog post could do a better job of surfacing that bit!
You can compare it to the existing vector tile layer created by MapTiler, which mimics the classic raster tile style: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map&layers=V
severak_cz
Oh but that default style for Shortbread is so ugly! No contrast, missing details and lots of information lost.
Hopefully it's vector tiles and information are there (I checked in Maputik) so it's possible to create my own style (which I will definitely try).
MapNavTom
There is also the MapTiler OMT style for OpenMapTiles, which uses Vector Tiles. It is a close copy of the Standard OSM map style. It appeared at the same time as Shortbread on the osm.org website.
reddalo
I agree, it's super close to the classical OSM style, but some things are missing, e.g. roads that are currently planned or in the building phase.
MapNavTom
Yes, buildings under construction aren't there yet either. OMT is OpenSource though, so you can make a pull request: https://github.com/openmaptiles/openmaptiles
severak_cz
Yeah. MapTiler has much better styles in general.
showcaseearth
The lack of boundaries below national level is off-putting. Both the style and the tile spec itself seem to need a lot of refinement... highways look like a patchwork at low zoom. I had also thought shortbread excluded a lot of POI types, but maybe I need to review again.
But that's not to diminish the accomplishment overall here for the OSM page itself– this is an awesome step forward!
wiredfool
OSM has always overdone boundaries in my opinion, the raster tiles show national/international waters and electoral districts, which are of limited use for most purposes.
timeon
Yeah only motorways are highlighted everything else is faded in background.
maelito
In case you wonder how much time / resources it takes to generate vector tiles, I'm running benchmarks with Tilemaker here for https://cartes.app
mourner
Also worth checking out https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler, which maybe a bit less mature, but is much faster than Tilemaker.
maelito
Is it ? The benchmark section says 42 m for a 128 Gb machine with 64 CPU.
economyballoon
I am sorry but what is "300 Go RAM" 300 Go? I only know GB/GiB.
leca
OP is probably French or his native tongue is French. Byte is “Octet” in French and typically you’ll see Go = Gigaoctet which is the same as GB.
globular-toast
Also more technically correct as byte never "officially" meant 8 bits, but octet is unambiguous.
farkanoid
It's basically French for GB (Go = Gigaoctet)
dolmen
Many important details are not visible anymore:
- gates on private pathways
- shop namesjohannes1234321
The choices are tough, also in details: Which shops to show in busy areas at which zoom level?
But mind: openstreetmap.org is ment as a developer site, for developers to see their changes quickly. The official idea is that other people should take the data and do "nice" things elsewhere. But of course reality is that users want to use openstreetmap.org as alternative to Google maps ...
ikawe
Official? I've never heard this as official doctrine. Can you point me to anything official?
I'd love to see OpenStreetMap.org be more directly useful to more people, rather than only as a "developer site".
notachatbot123
All the more reason to show rather more than less data.
lutoma
Personally I'm quite happy that these tiles cut down on the clutter in the original OSM tiles. It made it very hard for me to actually use them for navigation because there was just so much stuff everywhere.
For example the old tiles displayed rail tracks extremely prominently, which just aren't relevant 99% of the time even when traveling by train. In the vector tiles they're much more muted and thinner.
amluto
What happened to maps trying to make the names of most or all streets visible? It looks like the vector layer on the web viewer is sort of trying to show some street names, but it seems extremely buggy right now — names appear and then disappear again when making small zoom adjustments.
Not that Apple Maps or Google Maps are much better in this regard.
butz
While vector tiles are often marketed as faster loading ones, and it is true in OSM case, I would like to see apples to apples comparison: vector tiles with same level of detail as original OSM raster tiles. Maybe someone already has such vector style built?
colkassad
What's the impediment to not providing daily or weekly planet-wide mbtiles similar to the availability of OSM pbfs on AWS open data buckets[1]?
tppiotrowski
I think mbtiles are being phased out for pmtiles because no DB required and can be served from static storage like R2/S3 (with a worker but hopefully the worker part goes away and they support byte offset requests soon)
jtbaker
The worker isn’t required, having a z/x/y tile scheme just makes caching the tiles server side super easy.
Look at the network tab on https://pmtiles.io/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fdemo-bucket.protomaps....
stevage
You don't need a database to serve mbtiles. If you're deploying PMTiles somewhere that doesn't support byte offset requests, then they don't really have much advantage over mbtiles.
jamessb
That depends what you mean by needing a database. MBtiles files are SQLite database files, so you need a SQLite process running somewhere to extract the requested tiles.
sureglymop
An mbtiles file is just an SQLite db which can store image or vector tiles which can be very useful.
It's great for exploring tiles but it essentially doesn't support range queries/requests, which pmtiles does.
sp8962
To answer the question: somebody needs to do the initial work and it's a further moving part that needs to be kept running (as the other responses point out such a distribution would likely use PMTiles as a container format). Given the current finances and staffing of the OSMF likely not top priority.
colkassad
But they've done the work and are serving them now, just wondering why they don't just dump a copy on AWS. Thanks for answering!
perrygeo
To everyone with complaints about the new "Shortbread" styling, I agree that it's not perfect but that's kinda missing the point. The real story is that vector tiles have the styling applied client-side so anyone can tweak the look with a little javascript.
The prior raster tiles have the style baked in; if you want a new look, you need to generate a new image. So each map publisher ends up running their own data and server infrastructure just to tweak the style.
The vector tile approach means a single (cacheable) asset can be used in many different maps. Huge win. If you don't like the style, you can make your own without having to literally download the planet.
wiz21c
does a vector tile use more or less memory than a raster tile ? I mean, on average, in OSM.
davidkwast
Nice. I already use Vector Tiles on my backend. But it is nice to have other sources like this.
maxerickson
A feature goal for this deployment was that the tiles would update continuously, keeping up with changes that people are making to the OpenStreetMap database.
Providing that feedback is one of the main purposes of the site.
neomantra
This comment is a reminder that OSM Vector Tiles is sponsored work. It is exciting to see the deployment of it — congrats to the team!
If you find value in it, consider donating any amount to the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2024/02/11/2024-announcing-th...
Background:
Mapping applications split up data into "tiles" so you can download only the data you are currently looking at. For example, you don't want to download the entire planet, just to look at your own neighborhood.
Historically, these tiles were literally images that the client application (i.e. web map) could "tile" side by side to cover the part of the map you were looking at. Now we refer to those images as "raster" tiles, to differentiate them with "vector" tiles.
Rather than a rendered image, Vector tiles contain the raw data that you could use to render such an image. Vector tiles allow a smaller file size and more flexibility. For example, with vector tiles you can crisply render at partial zoom levels, keeping lines sharp and avoid pixelating text. The client can also have customizable styles - hiding certain layers or accentuating others from the vector tiles.
Vector tiles are not new technology. For example, Google Maps started using them over a decade ago. So why has it taken so long for OpenStreetMap.org? One reason is no doubt a lack of engineering capacity. There were also concerns about older and less powerful clients hardware not being up to the task, but that concern has lessened over time.
OpenStreetMap also has some unique requirements. It is a community edited database, and users want to see their edits soon (immediately really). It's not feasible to dynamically generate every tile request from the latest data, so caching is essential. Still, to minimize the amount of time tiles will be stale, a lot of work went into being able to quickly regenerate stale tiles before the new vector tiles were rolled out.