Mapbox and TileCat both serve MapLibre GL JS-compatible vector maps, and both bill on the same unit: the map load (when a map initializes, not each individual tile). The gap is entirely in what happens once you outgrow the free tier.
Both services give you the exact same free quota: 50,000 map loads per month. The difference shows up the moment you cross that line — Mapbox bills in tiered bands, TileCat has one flat-rate paid plan.
| TileCat | Mapbox (GL JS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free quota | 50,000 loads / month | 50,000 loads / month |
| Credit card to start | No | No |
| Price past the free tier | Flat 25€/month for 1M | Tiered: $5, then $4, then $3 / 1,000 |
| Real cost at 1M loads/month | 25€/month | ≈ $3,050/month |
| Attribution required (free plan) | Yes | Yes |
| Map design customization | Customizable colors (Growth plan) | Mapbox Studio (full visual editor) |
| Past 5M loads/month | Custom quote | Custom quote ("contact sales") |
Mapbox bills in descending tiers past the free quota: the price per 1,000 loads drops as volume grows, but it's still a variable cost that climbs alongside your traffic. TileCat took the opposite approach: one paid plan at 25€/month for 1M loads, full stop. No tier to track, no bill that swings month to month with traffic.
On design, TileCat ships a light and a dark style out of the box, with customizable colors from the dashboard on the Growth plan — not the full visual editor you get with Mapbox Studio, but enough to match the map to your brand without hand-writing a style JSON.
TileCat doesn't claim to do everything better. Mapbox has a wider, more mature ecosystem: advanced 3D terrain and buildings, the Search Box API, navigation/routing SDKs, Mapbox Studio for visually designing styles, and infrastructure proven at very large scale. If your product needs those specific pieces, or your team has already invested in the Mapbox ecosystem, it remains a solid choice.
TileCat targets a simpler case: a clean OpenStreetMap-based vector map, at a price that stays readable and predictable even as traffic grows.
Since both are MapLibre GL JS compatible, migrating usually comes down to swapping the style URL in your initialization code — see the API documentation for endpoint details. No rewrite of the map UI is needed in most cases.