About MapBench

MapBench exists for one simple reason: geographic questions are everyday questions. How far apart are these two towns? What county am I standing in? How big is this field? What's inside my delivery radius? Answering them shouldn't require a GIS license, a subscription, or handing your data to an unknown server.

So we built a platform of 111 free tools that run directly in your browser. Distances use proper spherical geometry, not flat-map shortcuts. Routing follows the real road network. File viewers parse your KML, GPX, GeoJSON and CSV locally — your files never leave your device.

What we optimise for

• Correctness — geodesic math, honest data labels, visible methodology.
• Privacy — no accounts, no stored locations, client-side file processing.
• Speed — every tool is its own lightweight page that loads only what it needs.
• Open data — OpenStreetMap, Natural Earth, US Census, Open-Meteo and free routing engines.

Honesty by design

Where a number is an estimate, we say so. Population figures carry their vintage year. Routing times are labelled free-flow rather than pretending to be live traffic. The full details live on the methodology and data sources pages.

The name

A forge is where raw material becomes useful tools. MapBench takes the world's open geographic data and shapes it into small, sharp instruments you can pick up and use immediately.