Web Map Kit › QGIS to PMTiles

How to export QGIS layers to PMTiles vector tiles

PMTiles packs a whole set of vector tiles into one file that a browser can read piece by piece. No tile server, no database: upload one file and your map loads only what's on screen.

By M, certified GIS professional · 30 September 2026

Why PMTiles?

• One file. All zoom levels and layers live in a single .pmtiles file instead of thousands of tile files.
• No server. The browser fetches just the bytes it needs with HTTP range requests, so plain static hosting works: Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3, or GitHub Pages for small files.
• Fast with big data. Only the tiles on screen load, so tens of thousands of features stay smooth, even on a phone. Sending whole layers as GeoJSON gets slow long before that.

Method 1: QGIS's vector tile writer + the pmtiles tool

1. Open Processing → Toolbox and search for Write Vector Tiles (MBTiles).
2. Add your layers, set the minimum and maximum zoom (for a city, roughly 10–16; for a country, 4–12; for the world, 0–8) and choose an output .mbtiles file.
3. Install the pmtiles command-line tool (a single download) and convert:

pmtiles convert layers.mbtiles layers.pmtiles
pmtiles show layers.pmtiles      # check zoom levels and layer names

What you don't get: the QGIS styling. The tiles hold geometry and attributes only; you write the colours again as a MapLibre style.

Method 2: tippecanoe

For very large datasets, tippecanoe gives the most control over simplification and feature dropping, and writes PMTiles directly. Export each layer from QGIS as GeoJSON (in EPSG:4326), then:

tippecanoe -o layers.pmtiles -zg --drop-densest-as-needed \
  -L roads:roads.geojson -L buildings:buildings.geojson

tippecanoe runs on macOS and Linux (on Windows, through WSL). As with method 1, the styling is up to you.

Method 3: Web Map Kit (styling, viewer and upload included)

Web Map Kit is our QGIS plugin ($17 once). It does methods 1 and 2's work inside QGIS and then goes further:

• picks the zoom range for your data and fixes broken low-zoom tiles that QGIS's writer can produce,
• copies your single, categorized and graduated styles, proportional circles, labels and field aliases,
• adds a mobile-friendly MapLibre viewer with legend, popups and search,
• uploads it all to your own Cloudflare R2 bucket (free tier: 10 GB, no bandwidth fees) and gives you the link.

See it on real data: 35,000 power plants and US tornado paths since 1950, both one PMTiles file each.

See Web Map Kit · $17 once

Hosting and showing a PMTiles file yourself

1. Upload the file to storage that supports range requests. On Cloudflare R2, connect a public domain to the bucket and add a CORS rule allowing GET and HEAD from your site.
2. Show it with MapLibre GL JS and the pmtiles JavaScript library:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/maplibre-gl/dist/maplibre-gl.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/pmtiles/dist/pmtiles.js"></script>
<script>
  const protocol = new pmtiles.Protocol();
  maplibregl.addProtocol("pmtiles", protocol.tile);
  const map = new maplibregl.Map({
    container: "map",
    style: { version: 8, sources: {
      data: { type: "vector", url: "pmtiles://https://maps.example.com/layers.pmtiles" } },
      layers: [{ id: "roads", type: "line", source: "data", "source-layer": "roads",
                 paint: { "line-color": "#0f766e", "line-width": 1.5 } }] }
  });
</script>

The source-layer names are your layer names from the export step (check them with pmtiles show).

Questions