# PMTiles

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/pmtiles/

11 people recommended PMTiles in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and none criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 12 months, in 7 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A single-file map tile format that can be served over plain HTTP range requests with no backend, which people say is cheap to host and fast to load.

Summary written by Claude from 16 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 14 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Good CLI and library support (3 comments in the sample): "as someone integrating PMTiles right now, thank you!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767687)) "I’ve found it so useful I created an Elixir library" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46771366)) "their CLI has pretty much everything you need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47305940))
- Cheap hosting with no backend (2 comments in the sample): "bandwidth costs are negligible because clients only download the exact data they need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46438779)) "easy to host and get incredible performance with a good CDN" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645184))
- Fast loading via range requests (2 comments in the sample): "Loading tiles with range requests made our application so much faster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765072)) "pmtiles files are better because they allow for http range requests" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48072870))
- Efficient storage and retrieval (2 comments in the sample): "Very efficient to store and retrieve, and cut our S3 PUT request costs by something like 90% across the project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572367)) "It efficiently produces pyramidal XYZ tile overviews of vector data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630482))

## What people warn about

- Metadata stored as JSON (1 comment in the sample): "the tile metadata is stored as JSON, which I get is for compatibility reasons with existing software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46442637))

## What people recommend instead

- [MapLibre Tile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maplibre-tile-format/): 7 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PMTiles", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pmtiles/ (11 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 3 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.