name: Protomaps FinOps
description: Financial operations guidance for using Protomaps hosted API and self-hosted PMTiles deployments.
url: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/cost
created: 2026-06-13
modified: 2026-06-13

cost_model:
  type: hybrid
  description: >
    Protomaps uses a hybrid cost model. The hosted API is funded via GitHub Sponsorship at a flat
    monthly rate rather than consumption-based pricing. For self-hosted deployments, costs are
    passed directly to the user's cloud provider at infrastructure rates, which are significantly
    lower than commercial map APIs.

hosted_api:
  monthly_cost_commercial: 14
  currency: USD
  unit: month
  cap: 1000000 tile requests/month
  sponsor_url: https://github.com/sponsors/protomaps

self_hosted_comparison:
  reference_workload:
    monthly_tile_requests: 625000
    outgoing_bandwidth_gb: 1000
  providers:
    - name: Google Maps Platform
      monthly_cost_usd: 3640
    - name: Hosted Map API (generic)
      monthly_cost_usd: 1875
    - name: Protomaps on AWS
      monthly_cost_usd: 119.56
      components:
        - CloudFront GET Requests: "$0.009 per 10,000"
        - CloudFront Bandwidth to Internet: "$0.10 per GB"
        - Lambda invocations: "$0.60 per 1,000,000"
        - S3 Storage: "$0.023 per GB"
        - cache_hit_rate_assumption: 50%
    - name: Protomaps on Cloudflare R2
      monthly_cost_usd: 11.45
      components:
        - Workers invocations: "$0.30 per million"
        - Workers Paid Plan base: "$5.00/month"
        - R2 object retrieval: "$0.36 per million"
        - R2 storage: "$0.015 per GB"

cost_optimization:
  strategies:
    - name: Self-host on Cloudflare R2
      description: Most cost-effective option. Cloudflare R2 has no egress fees, making it ideal for high-traffic deployments.
      savings: Up to 30-300x cheaper than commercial map APIs
      docs: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/cloudflare

    - name: Self-host on AWS CloudFront + S3
      description: Good option for teams already on AWS. Leverage CloudFront caching to minimize S3 and Lambda costs.
      docs: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/aws

    - name: Self-host on Google Cloud CDN + GCS
      description: Option for teams on Google Cloud. Use GCS for storage and Cloud CDN for delivery.
      docs: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/google-cloud

    - name: Self-host on Azure
      description: Option for teams on Azure infrastructure.
      docs: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/azure

    - name: Extract regional PMTiles
      description: >
        Instead of hosting the entire planet (110+ GB), extract only the geographic region you need
        using the pmtiles CLI extract command. Reduces storage costs and speeds up initial uploads.
      docs: https://docs.protomaps.com/pmtiles/cli

    - name: Use daily planet builds
      description: >
        Protomaps provides daily OpenStreetMap planet builds at maps.protomaps.com/builds so you
        don't need to run your own tile generation pipeline.
      url: https://maps.protomaps.com/builds

  cost_calculator: https://docs.protomaps.com/deploy/cost

notes:
  - Protomaps is not SaaS and has stated this explicitly to keep focus on the open source mission.
  - The $14/month GitHub Sponsorship tier is designed to offset CDN infrastructure costs, not to generate profit.
  - Users with high traffic (>1M tiles/month) are encouraged to self-host rather than upgrade.
  - Open source cost calculator code is available on GitHub.