RustGIS

Why RustGIS

• Fast and small. One native program, drawn on the GPU, with no runtime to install and no server to run.
• Runs everywhere. The same app on Windows, macOS and Linux, and compiled to WebAssembly at web.rustgis.app with nothing to install.
• Local and private. Your files are read and written on your machine, and nothing is uploaded on its own. The network is used only when you ask for it: web basemaps, plugins, the GeoLibre tools and the AI model you pick, which receives your questions and the data it reads to answer them.
• Everything is a command. Every button in the ribbon is a command with an id. Script it from rustgis-cli, chain it in notebooks and models, use completion in the Script pane, or ask the AI Assistant to run it for you.
• Familiar. A ribbon laid out in the order of the work (Home, Data, Style, Edit, Analyze, View, Publish), Layers and Browser panes, an attribute table, and undo for every change.
• Extensible. Over 1,000 GeoLibre and Whitebox tools for terrain, hydrology, LiDAR and remote sensing, and sandboxed WebAssembly plugins that add commands, tools and ribbon tabs.

A tour

Every screenshot is RustGIS itself, rendered offscreen by cargo run -p rustgis-ui-egui --example ui_shot.

Features

Area	Highlights
Data	GeoJSON, CSV/TSV with x/y columns in any coordinate system or WKT geometry, Excel and OpenDocument spreadsheets, GeoRSS, LandXML, encoded polylines, Shapefile (zipped too, in the browser as well), GeoPackage, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, KML/KMZ (with styles), GPX, GML, MapInfo MIF/MID, OpenStreetMap PBF, TopoJSON, AutoCAD DXF, LiDAR point clouds (LAS, LAZ, COPC) and geotagged photos (large files are read in place), files by their web address, every vector format GDAL reads when it is installed, Esri File Geodatabases without GDAL (desktop), PostGIS, MySQL, MariaDB and SQL Server tables read live (desktop), and SQL queries and DuckDB databases through DuckDB Spatial when DuckDB is installed; PMTiles archives (web or file) and MBTiles files; GeoJSON, CSV, GeoPackage, GeoParquet, Shapefile, FlatGeobuf, KML/KMZ, GPX and WKT out; standalone tables; reusable connections; supported QGIS projects and layer styles; layer and map files, styles, templates and packages
Rasters	GeoTIFF and cloud-optimised GeoTIFF (any pixel type, tiled or striped, compressed), ASCII grids, Zarr 2 and 3 stores (a variable at a time step, by folder or web address), and JPEG 2000, NetCDF, HDF, ERDAS Imagine and the other rasters GDAL reads when it is installed (desktop); reprojection from any EPSG code; Stretch, RGB, Classify, Unique Values, Colormap and Shaded Relief; DRA, band combinations, brightness/contrast/gamma; raster functions, indices, change detection, classification, georeferencing; cloud-optimised GeoTIFF export; data cubes, point time-series charts, temporal summaries and trends
Maps	Multiple maps and layouts per project, renamed and duplicated from the Browser pane; tilt, rotation, terrain and a 3D globe; maps of the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies; Web Mercator or any projection (Equal Earth, Robinson, Winkel Tripel, polar and regional presets, or an EPSG code); bookmarks, extent history, coordinate navigation; five offline basemaps, with borders in two worldviews
Web services	WMS, WMTS, WFS, OGC API Features and ArcGIS REST (FeatureServer, MapServer, ImageServer, VectorTileServer) from their capabilities
Web tiles	XYZ/TMS/WMS raster tiles, Mapbox Vector Tiles and MapLibre styles (sprites, patterns, expressions), cached and fetched in the background
Cartography	Single symbol, unique values, graduated colours, proportional symbols; label classes with SQL queries, straight and curved line placement, installed font families, scale ranges and annotation; stacked and dashed line strokes, symbol levels, reference scales and polygons without fill; masking, display filters, aggregation bins, 2.5D extrusion; graphics and dynamic text
Editing	Create, move, rotate, scale, merge, split and explode features; snapping, templates, elevation, traverse, topology rules; domains, subtypes, attribute rules, relationships, archiving; undo for everything
Analysis	Selection by attributes (SQL) and location; Buffer, Near, Clip, Erase, Split, Intersect, Identity, Union, Symmetrical Difference, Update, Dissolve, Summarize Within, Summary Statistics, Pivot Table, Spatial Join, Zonal Statistics, A5 grids and a geometry calculator; viewshed, line of sight, IDW, ordinary kriging, shortest path, suitability modelling; ModelBuilder on a node canvas and scripts with command, parameter and value completion; 1,000+ GeoLibre and Whitebox raster, vector, LiDAR, hydrology and terrain tools
Imagery	Ortho and reality mapping, pixel classification (k-means, minimum distance, a trainable neural network), mensuration, hosted imagery tiles
Layouts and reports	Page layouts with map frames, legends, scale bars, grids and map series; publication sheets and figures in one command, format panes, guides, snapping and element locks; reports with groups, statistics, charts and subreports; presentations (HTML slideshow, PDF); notebooks (Jupyter in and out)
Sharing	PNG export at any DPI; PDF; web map pages, OGC API Features collections, MapLibre styles, glTF scenes, locators; project, map and mobile map packages; offline areas with sync
AI Assistant	Ask about your data or tell the map what to do in plain language, with Anthropic, OpenAI (a key, or your ChatGPT plan by signing in), Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible model; also rustgis-cli ask, and an MCP server (rustgis-cli mcp) for Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and other agents
Plugins	Sandboxed WebAssembly plugins add commands, tools and ribbon tabs; install them from plugins.rustgis.app on the desktop, command line and web
Interface	Layers, Browser and Data Sources panes as tabs, command search (Ctrl+K), keyboard shortcuts, dark mode, a customizable ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar, linked side-by-side maps, 19 languages

The user guide covers each area in detail, Comparison sets RustGIS beside GeoLibre, QGIS and ArcGIS, and ROADMAP.md lists what's next.

Get RustGIS

• Web app: open web.rustgis.app. The same ribbon and tools, with the browser's file picker for data and projects, and downloads for Save and Export.
• Desktop: download the app for Windows, macOS or Linux from downloads.rustgis.app or the latest release (see Installation for the files and first-run notes).
• Microsoft Store: get RustGIS from the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 and 11, which installs it in one click and keeps it up to date.
• Package managers: winget install OpenGeos.RustGIS, brew install --cask opengeos/rustgis/rustgis, yay -S rustgis-bin (AUR), or sudo dnf copr enable giswqs/rustgis && sudo dnf install rustgis (Fedora).
• From source: cargo run --release -p rustgis (Rust 1.90 or later).

Quick start

cargo run --release -p rustgis                       # the desktop app with the World Atlas sample
cargo run --release -p rustgis -- data.geojson       # open data (or a .rgis project)

Command line: every ribbon action is a command with an id.

rustgis-cli commands                                 # all command ids and parameters
rustgis-cli render countries.geojson map.png --basemap ocean
rustgis-cli run --sample \
  --cmd 'gp.run={"tool":"countPoints","params":{"polygons":"Countries","points":"Cities"}}' \
  --cmd 'layer.symbology={"layer":"Countries_Summarize","type":"graduated","field":"point_count"}' \
  --cmd 'share.exportMap={"path":"out.png","dpi":192}' --save atlas.rgis
rustgis-cli ask --sample "Which 5 countries have the largest GDP?"
claude mcp add rustgis -- rustgis-cli mcp --sample   # RustGIS as an MCP server for AI agents

See Command Line for more.

Python: the same engine and commands in-process (pip install rustgis), and the app itself in a Jupyter notebook.

import rustgis
s = rustgis.Session(sample=True)
s.run("gp.run", tool="buffer", params={"input": "Cities", "distance": 100})
s.to_png("map.png")
gdf = s.layer("Cities_Buffer").to_geopandas()

See Python and the getting-started notebook (open in Colab).

Architecture

Layered crates, each depending only on the ones below it:

Layer	Crate	Job
L0	rustgis-geom	coordinates, extents, Web Mercator, geodesic distance/area, scale
L1	rustgis-data	features and typed attributes; GeoJSON, CSV, Shapefile, KML, GPX and more; GeoPackage, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, LiDAR, PostGIS and MySQL providers; GDAL formats and DuckDB queries through their programs; SQL where clauses; rasters (GeoTIFF, ASCII grid, Zarr) and their coordinate systems
L2	rustgis-map, rustgis-analysis	layers, symbology, labeling, camera, basemaps; geoprocessing (on geo)
L2	rustgis-tiles	web map tiles: XYZ/TMS/WMS, Mapbox Vector Tiles, PMTiles and MBTiles archives, MapLibre styles, the tile cache
L3	rustgis-render	tiny-skia renderer, label placement, PNG export, fonts
L3	rustgis-plugins	sandboxed WebAssembly plugins and the plugin registry
L3	rustgis-geolibre	the GeoLibre tool suite as geoprocessing tools
L4	rustgis-engine	session, undo, command registry, sample project
L5	rustgis-assistant	the AI Assistant: a chat agent that acts through commands
L6	rustgis-ui-egui	the ribbon front end (swappable)
apps	rustgis, rustgis-cli, rustgis-web, rustgis-python	desktop, command line, browser (WebAssembly), the rustgis Python package

cargo xtask ci runs formatting, clippy, the tests and the layering check. Contributor and agent notes: AGENTS.md.

Sponsor

RustGIS is free and open source, and stays that way. If it is useful to you or your team, sponsorship is the most direct way to keep development, hosting and cross-platform distribution going.

• GitHub Sponsors: monthly or one-time, billed through your GitHub account.
• Buy Me a Coffee: a quick one-off contribution, no account required.

See the Become a Sponsor page for what sponsorship supports and for other, free ways to help.

Citation

If you use RustGIS in your work, please cite it. RustGIS is archived on Zenodo, which mints a DOI for every release. The concept DOI below always resolves to the latest version.

Wu, Q., Rincón Albarracín, J. G., Filho, E., Hofbauer, D., Fitzgerald, M., & Strebel, D. (2026). RustGIS: A fast, free and open-source GIS in pure Rust for mapping, analyzing and sharing geospatial data. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23633281

You can also use GitHub's "Cite this repository" button (which reads CITATION.cff) to copy a ready-made APA or BibTeX entry. See the How to Cite page for more formats.

Star History

Acknowledgements

RustGIS builds on the work of many projects and their authors: QGIS, ArcGIS Pro and GDAL, the GIS it is measured against; MapLibre and PROJ; the GeoLibre tool suite, after John Lindsay's WhiteboxTools; OpenFreeMap for vector basemaps; Natural Earth, OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps and the EPSG dataset; and the Rust crates it is made of, among them egui, wgpu, tiny-skia, geo, proj4rs, tiff, Apache Arrow and Parquet, rusqlite and wasmi. See the acknowledgements for the full list, and ATTRIBUTION.md for every asset's source and licence.

Disclaimer

RustGIS is primarily built with Claude Opus 5.5, an AI model by Anthropic, working under human direction and review. Its results are tested, but check them for your own use, and please report anything that looks wrong.

License and credits

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Sample data from Natural Earth (public domain).