---
id: mapbox-vector-tile
version: "2.2.0"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: aging
---

# mapbox-vector-tile — Mapbox Vector Tile encoding and decoding.

License: permissive · Maintenance: aging · Downloads: 438.3K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Mapbox Vector Tile is a library for encoding geographic features into and decoding them from the MVT binary format, which is a widely used standard for transmitting vector map data efficiently over the web. It works with geometries in WKT (Well-Known Text), WKB (Well-Known Binary), or shapely objects, and handles the coordinate scaling and transformation needed to fit geometries into the tile's 4096-unit extent.

The library sits between your geographic data and the tile format, managing the protocol buffer serialization and layer organization. It supports coordinate system conversions when you provide tile bounds, allowing you to work with data in one projection and transform it into tile-relative coordinates. The core dependencies are protobuf for binary encoding, shapely for geometry handling, and pyclipper for polygon clipping operations.

Use it for:

- Encode geographic features from a database or GIS system into MVT format for serving to web map clients.
- Decode MVT tiles received from a tile server to extract and analyze feature properties and geometries.
- Transform geometries from different projections into tile coordinates for encoding.
- Build a tile generation pipeline that processes vector data and outputs MVT files for map rendering.
- Integrate with web mapping frameworks that consume MVT tiles as a data source.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Encodes and decodes Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT) in Protocol Buffer format, handling geometric data and properties across multiple layers with coordinate transformation support.

Yes, if you need to work with Mapbox Vector Tiles in Python. The package is permissively licensed, has low install friction, and carries no known vulnerabilities. Maintenance is aging, so verify that the version supports your use case before committing; for active development or rapid bug fixes, check the repository's issue tracker first.

## Install

pip install mapbox-vector-tile
uv add mapbox-vector-tile
poetry add mapbox-vector-tile

## Installing mapbox-vector-tile

Before you install: Low friction installation with a pure-Python wheel. Maintenance is aging—last release was over a year ago—but the repository remains active and the package has been stable since its early releases.

License in practice: MIT license permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution with minimal legal friction.

Quickstart:

pip install mapbox-vector-tile

import mapbox_vector_tile

tile_data = mapbox_vector_tile.encode([
  {
    "name": "layer1",
    "features": [
      {
        "geometry": "POLYGON ((0 0, 0 1, 1 1, 1 0, 0 0))",
        "properties": {"id": 1}
      }
    ]
  }
])

Geometries must have coordinates in tile-relative space (range [0, 4096)) or you must provide quantize_bounds for automatic scaling.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package handles all geometry types supported by the MVT specification, or if limitations beyond GeometryCollection exist.
- Performance characteristics when encoding or decoding large tiles or many layers.
- Whether optional pyproj dependency is required for most use cases or only for CRS transformations.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: aging
- Downloads: 438.3K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

mapbox vector tile encoding decoding, mvt protobuf geometry, tile coordinate transformation, vector tile format conversion, geospatial tile processing, wkt wkb geometry tiles, tile layer feature encoding, geospatial, tile-format, protobuf

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