---
id: rio-cogeo
version: "7.0.2"
license: BSD 3-Clause License Copyright (c) 2021, cogeotiff All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# rio-cogeo — Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COGEO) creation plugin for rasterio

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 390.9K/mo

## What it is and what it does

rio-cogeo is a Rasterio plugin that transforms GeoTIFF files into Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs), a format optimized for cloud storage and remote access. It enforces COG specifications while adding internal overviews and 512x512 internal tiles to enable efficient partial-file reads over HTTP. The package provides both programmatic and command-line interfaces for conversion and validation, built on top of Rasterio's geospatial I/O layer.

The plugin depends on click for CLI scaffolding, morecantile for tile management, pydantic for configuration validation, and rasterio for the underlying GDAL integration. It targets modern Python (3.11+) and is actively maintained. Users working with geospatial data in cloud environments—particularly those serving raster data over the web or storing large imagery in object storage—use it to pre-process files into a format that minimizes bandwidth and latency for remote clients.

Use it for:

- Convert existing GeoTIFF archives to COG format for efficient cloud storage and HTTP range-request access.
- Validate that raster files meet COG specifications before publishing to cloud platforms like AWS S3 or GCS.
- Automate batch COG creation in geospatial data pipelines to optimize downstream web-based visualization or analysis.
- Create cloud-native raster datasets with internal overviews for multi-resolution web map serving.
- Integrate COG generation into geospatial ETL workflows to reduce data transfer costs in cloud environments.

## Worth the install?

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

rio-cogeo creates and validates Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) as a Rasterio plugin, adding internal overviews and tiled structure to geospatial raster files for efficient cloud storage and access.

Yes. rio-cogeo is actively maintained, has low install friction, carries a permissive BSD license, and solves a concrete problem for anyone working with geospatial rasters in cloud environments. The four runtime dependencies are well-established geospatial libraries. No known security vulnerabilities. Install if you need to create or validate Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs.

## Install

pip install rio-cogeo
uv add rio-cogeo
poetry add rio-cogeo

## Installing rio-cogeo

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution and four straightforward runtime dependencies (click, morecantile, pydantic, rasterio). Actively maintained as of 2026-06-23 with recent releases.

License in practice: BSD 3-Clause permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions—include the license text and copyright notice in distributions.

Quickstart:

pip install rio-cogeo

from rio_cogeo.cogeo import cog_translate
from rasterio.io import MemoryFile

cog_translate('input.tif', 'output_cog.tif')

Requires GDAL > 2.3.2 and Rasterio with GDAL bindings; Python >= 3.11.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports the newer GDAL 3.1+ COG driver via --use-cog-driver by default in version 7.0.2.
- Specific performance characteristics or file-size overhead from internal overviews and 512x512 tiling.

## Package facts

- License: BSD 3-Clause License Copyright (c) 2021, cogeotiff All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 390.9K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

cloud optimized geotiff creation, cog geotiff rasterio plugin, geospatial raster optimization, cogeo validation tool, cloud-native geotiff, rasterio cog writer, geotiff tiling and overviews, geospatial, raster-processing, cloud-native

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