Upload Data to Create Hosted Tilesets

Supported formats

The console supports MBTiles and PMTiles uploads for vector or raster tilesets. It also accepts GeoJSON/JSON documents for editable datasets. Shapefile upload is not available in the current flow.

Accepted file types and upload limits

This table shows what the current console upload accepts and which per-file limits apply. MBTiles and PMTiles uploads are plan-based. Free supports up to 10 hosted files and 1 GB per file. Flex and Pro support up to 20 GB per file unless custom Pro terms apply.

Tileset upload workflow

Open Tilesets, select Add Tileset, and add one or more MBTiles or PMTiles files. Mappinest detects the format from the file extension, then validates and prepares each tileset for delivery endpoints.

Step 1 - Add files

Select Add Tileset, then drag MBTiles or PMTiles files into the dialog or select Browse. You can add up to 5 files at once.

Step 2 - Upload files

Select Upload to start. The dialog shows the progress of each file.

Step 3 - Processing

After upload completes, the tileset is validated and processed before tile delivery is enabled.

Step 4 - Tileset ready

Once processing finishes, the tileset appears in the Tilesets list and is available through delivery endpoints.

Tileset naming

When you upload a file, the filename is sanitized. Special characters are removed and spaces are replaced with underscores. If a tileset with the same name already exists, a version suffix is appended to keep the key unique and the cache stable.

The final tileset ID takes the form username.tileset, for example mappinest.Counties. The Tilesets table shows the tileset ID directly in the Tileset ID column. Click the tileset when you want to open the Studio preview or copy full API URLs from the API drawer.

Tileset lifecycle

After upload, each tileset goes through validation and preparation before it is ready to serve through the Tiles API.

1. The uploaded file is validated to confirm it can be read and that the required tileset metadata is present.
2. If validation passes, the tileset is processed and prepared for delivery through the standard tile endpoints.
3. Once publishing finishes, the tileset is available through TileJSON, vector tile, or raster tile XYZ URL.

Upload validation limits

Mappinest validates datasets and tilesets before publishing. Dataset imports are normalized to GeoJSON, while tilesets are checked at the individual tile level.

Dataset complexity limits

A dataset source file can be within the upload limit and still fail validation if the published GeoJSON exceeds the output size or feature count limit.

Tileset complexity limits

New uploads are checked for file validity, tile weight, and rendering complexity before publishing. These checks help prevent very large tiles from causing slow map rendering, high bandwidth usage, or unnecessary pressure on the tile cache.

• Vector tiles are checked for average tile size, largest tile size, layer count, and fields per layer.
• Raster tiles are checked for average tile size, largest tile size, and tile resolution when it can be detected from the tileset.

Current vector tileset limits

Current raster tileset limits

What to read next

• Upload GeoJSON>
• Dataset Studio>
• Host MBTiles>
• Host PMTiles>
• Platform Limits>