# mapbox/geobuf

A compact binary encoding for geographic data.

Repository: https://github.com/mapbox/geobuf
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/geobuf
Language: JavaScript
License: ISC
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-06-29T15:21:16+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 78/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 90, release rhythm 49, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4433, "days_push": 65, "days_rel": 127, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1032, forks 86 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:18.231972+00:00)

## What it is
Geobuf is a JavaScript library that encodes GeoJSON geographic data into a compact binary format based on protocol buffers, achieving 6-8x size reduction with fast encoding and decoding. It also ships CLI binaries (2geobuf, geobuf2, shp2geobuf) for converting between GeoJSON, Geobuf, and Shapefiles.

## Use cases
- compress geo files to smaller binary format
- convert shapefile to compact binary encoding
- reduce size of geographic data for web transfer
- encode geo as protobuf
- decode geobuf back to geo
- serve large map datasets efficiently

## When to choose
- you need to shrink large GeoJSON datasets for storage or network transfer
- you want fast, nearly lossless binary encoding of geographic data without tiling or projection
- you need CLI conversion between GeoJSON, Shapefile, and binary formats

## When to avoid
- you need lossless coordinate precision beyond 6 decimal places (~10cm)
- you need tiled, projected vector tiles for map rendering (use Mapbox Vector Tiles instead)
- you require a fully frozen, guaranteed-stable encoding schema

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: serialization, compression
- domain: files
- platform: browser, cli, cross-platform
- tags: geo, protobuf, binary-format, geospatial-data, shapefile, geospatial, maps, nodejs

## Member repositories
- mapbox/geobuf (main) score 78

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:18.231972+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:06:45.218073+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mapbox/geobuf (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:18.231972+00:00, sha 25ae759b22ca)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/geobuf (fetched 2026-08-29T13:06:29.189360+00:00, sha 51db9b971ec8)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.