PMTiles

PMTiles is an archive format in which a whole set of tiles sits in one file with an internal index. The browser does not download it as a whole: it requests the pieces it needs with HTTP range requests, which any static hosting can serve — S3, Cloudflare R2, GitHub Pages, plain Nginx.

Hence the main benefit: the map works without a tile server. There is no service to set up, watch over and pay for — the file simply sits next to the site. For a prototype, an internal dashboard or a project that has to outlive the shutdown of a third-party map service, that makes life noticeably easier.

Inside the archive are MVT vector tiles, that is geometry with attributes, and the appearance is set by a style on the client side. The export builds the pyramid up to zoom 12: beyond that encoding the tiles becomes too expensive, and if you asked for more, we honestly report the limitation and suggest MBTiles. For the same reason the exporter rejects very dense areas straight away rather than after a long wait: a short, clear refusal is better than a stuck job.