I'm working on a react application with mapbox-gl for the first time and I have the same question. I would transition over to react-map-gl or react-mapbox-gl, but I haven't found any compelling reasons to. So far, plain mapbox-gl and redux have been a powerful combo and I've had no issues linking map state to the general application's state. This could be my person bias coming from a lack of react experience and working previously with leaflet.js, but I'd love to hear any other perspectives Answer from Reedfiend on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/gis › when to use react-map-gl or plain mapbox-gl in react app?
r/gis on Reddit: When to use react-map-gl or plain mapbox-gl in React app?
October 13, 2021 -

I'm working on a React app with a mapbox component and am trying to understand the use case for react-map-gl vs the examples on the Mapbox site that just use mapbox-gl. From the React GitHub issues they mention this in regards to performance -

React may decide to render more than necessary than Mapbox would on its own, failing to account for how expensive the draw call is.

If you are using mapbox as nothing but a map display, generally speaking you do not need this library. If you are trying to match the map with any other React component, you will eventually run into the same issue.

But then the entire Mapbox studio is written I believe without any react wrappers...and there are plenty of React components in Studio besides the map, so it does not seem like this argument holds true. Anyone have thoughts or experience they can share?

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React Map GL
visgl.github.io › react-map-gl
Home | react-map-gl
Comes with additional React interfaces such as context and hooks to support custom components. Use together with e.g. deck.gl to render performant and compelling 2D and 3D WebGL visualizations on top of your MapLibre GL JS and Mapbox GL JS based maps.
Discussions

React Native - react-native-mapbox-gl vs react-native-maps - Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange
I have to develop apps with React Native for mobile that concern with mapping and found out there are two libraries for Native on this - react-native-mapbox-gl and react-native-maps. From github pa... More on gis.stackexchange.com
🌐 gis.stackexchange.com
July 28, 2018
question: Considerably lower FPS with react-map-gl compared to mapbox-gl
I'm having a considerably lower frame rate with react-map-gl components compared to only using mapbox-gl. In Chrome, sometimes rendering takes twice as much time with react-map-gl. I had better res... More on github.com
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13
July 13, 2020
reactjs - What's the difference between the components ReactMapGL and MapGL in the react-map-gl library? - Stack Overflow
I can't understand the difference between the component ReactMapGL and the component MapGL in the react-map-gl library. The docs don't explain it and they seem to have the same properties. https:/... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
react-map-gl or mapbox-gl?
I'm not sure you'll be able to do this project without JavaScript. It might be possible, but seems like a stretch. I also don't quite understand exactly what's going wrong. react-map-gl looks like a simple wrapper around mapbox-gl, so if you're not planning to use React in this project, you won't want to include react-map-gl either. Perhaps you want to do something like this ? More on reddit.com
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October 12, 2021
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Medium
medium.com › @majalijunyc › phase5-using-mapbox-and-or-react-map-gl-aka-the-end-of-the-road-3438fd4742ae
Phase5: Using Mapbox and/or React-Map-Gl; aka the End of the Road | by MAJ ALIJU | Medium
May 1, 2023 - What I implemented for the map, is MapBox GL JS, which you can find here. However I went for a deeper option, given that I had to use Create-React-App (which I do have some qualms with) and use Uber’s implementation of a wonderful React wrapper for Mapbox called React-Map-GL.
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GitHub
github.com › visgl › react-map-gl
GitHub - visgl/react-map-gl: React friendly API wrapper around MapboxGL JS · GitHub
// Using Maplibre import * as React from 'react'; import Map from 'react-map-gl/maplibre'; import 'maplibre-gl/dist/maplibre-gl.css'; function App() { return ( <Map initialViewState={{ longitude: -122.4, latitude: 37.8, zoom: 14 }} style={{width: 600, height: 400}} mapStyle="https://api.maptiler.com/maps/streets/style.json?key=<Maptiler access token>" /> ); } ... // Using Mapbox import * as React from 'react'; import Map from 'react-map-gl/mapbox'; import 'mapbox-gl/dist/mapbox-gl.css'; function App() { return ( <Map // https://visgl.github.io/react-map-gl/docs/get-started/mapbox-tokens mapboxAccessToken="<Mapbox access token>" initialViewState={{ longitude: -100, latitude: 40, zoom: 3.5 }} style={{width: 600, height: 400}} mapStyle="mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v9" /> ); }
Starred by 8.4K users
Forked by 1.4K users
Languages   TypeScript 65.5% | JavaScript 32.2%
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Mapbox
mapbox.com › blog › mapbox-gl-js-react
Mapbox GL JS + React
August 13, 2025 - ... A mapboxgl.Marker instance is used to display the collected data on the map (Mapbox GL JS controls its position on the map) but the contents of the marker is React powered using ReactDOM.render.
Find elsewhere
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npm Trends
npmtrends.com › mapbox-gl-vs-react-map-gl-vs-react-mapbox-gl
mapbox-gl vs react-map-gl vs react-mapbox-gl | npm trends
Comparing trends for mapbox-gl 3.16.0 which has 1,892,414 weekly downloads and 11,969 GitHub stars vs. react-map-gl 8.1.0 which has 931,499 weekly downloads and 8,306 GitHub stars vs. react-mapbox-gl 5.1.1 which has 74,683 weekly downloads and 1,991 GitHub stars.
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React Map GL
visgl.github.io › introduction
Introduction | react-map-gl
In v7.0, react-map-gl was fully rewritten to better align its API with the underlying Mapbox GL JS library.
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GitHub
github.com › visgl › react-map-gl › issues › 1151
question: Considerably lower FPS with react-map-gl compared to mapbox-gl · Issue #1151 · visgl/react-map-gl
July 13, 2020 - I'm having a considerably lower frame rate with react-map-gl components compared to only using mapbox-gl. In Chrome, sometimes rendering takes twice as much time with react-map-gl. I had better results in Firefox, but it's still slower. Is this expected or am I missing something obvious about how to handle React re-renders more efficiently?
Author   benknab
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React Map GL
visgl.github.io › what's new
What's new | react-map-gl
First version to support Mapbox GL JS' official types and MapLibre GL JS v5. This version fully separates the code that support each compatible map library: react-map-gl/mapbox: for use with mapbox-gl>=3.5.0
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/learnprogramming › react-map-gl or mapbox-gl?
r/learnprogramming on Reddit: react-map-gl or mapbox-gl?
October 12, 2021 -

I'm really starting to get frustrated with this. I've seen a split between using react-map-gl and mapbox-gl usage in tutorials. It's all honestly kind of a mess cos no one tutorial/documentation is what I need it for. I thought I had figured something out but I realized my .js files arent acutally responisble for rendering the map. It's only rendering because of a <script> tag I found in one tutorial in the index.html file which is I feel like that's not what I want ultimately.

Ultimately I know I'm going to have to loop thru gelocation data in an API to add points on a map but if it's only because of that tag in html then why the hell use React to begin with? It's weird to me I can't find a striaght answer considering how popular React is.

I also hate JavaScript (cliche, I know) and am much more competent in Python so I'm considering scrapping this (honestly for like the sixth time now) and starting over in Django or Flask even thought I have zero experience with them.

Thoughts?

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npm
npmjs.com › package › react-map-gl
react-map-gl - npm
October 3, 2025 - React components for MapLibre GL JS and Mapbox GL JS. Latest version: 8.1.1, last published: 3 days ago. Start using react-map-gl in your project by running `npm i react-map-gl`. There are 478 other projects in the npm registry using react-map-gl.
      » npm install react-map-gl
    
Published   Apr 11, 2026
Version   8.1.1
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LogRocket
blog.logrocket.com › home › react map library comparison
React map library comparison - LogRocket Blog
June 4, 2024 - React-map-gl Exposes the entire Mapbox GL JS functionality to React apps. React-map-gl also integrates seamlessly with deck.gl. This means that this library is packed with functionality.
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GitHub
github.com › alex3165 › react-mapbox-gl › issues › 97
Comparison to Uber's react-map-gl · Issue #97 · alex3165/react-mapbox-gl
January 10, 2017 - has anyone compared this to react-map-gl by uber? if so, what were your findings? for example we are skeptical of building the style object and passing it in to control everything instead of using ...
Published   Jan 10, 2017
Top answer
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21

I know this is an old post..

As I understand it, the cause is that mapbox (not react-map-gl) has a bug in it that does not transpile correctly with "npm build".

Fortunately you do NOT have to eject your app as I learned in this link: https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/10173#issuecomment-753662795

I had to npm install worker-loader

Then add the following lines.

    // had this.
    import ReactMapGL, { FlyToInterpolator, NavigationControl } from 'react-map-gl';    import 'mapbox-gl/dist/mapbox-gl.css';


    // added the following 6 lines.
    import mapboxgl from 'mapbox-gl';

    // The following is required to stop "npm build" from transpiling mapbox code.
    // notice the exclamation point in the import.
    // @ts-ignore
    // eslint-disable-next-line import/no-webpack-loader-syntax, import/no-unresolved
    mapboxgl.workerClass = require('worker-loader!mapbox-gl/dist/mapbox-gl-csp-worker').default;

Since I'm using typescript and linting, I had to add some directives to ignore warnings/errors that would otherwise stop it from compiling.

Note that I did not have to install mapboxgl since react-map-gl uses it.

But, I did need to add eslint-disable-next-line import/no-unresolved

and eslint-disable-next-line import/no-webpack-loader-syntax combined on the same line.

I am using "react-map-gl": "^6.1.17".

2 of 7
4

The issue is caused by the transpiler. It's a bug that Mapbox is working on. Follow the suggestions here:

https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/10173

It's also in the official documentation now.

https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#transpiling-v2

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Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com › item
React-map-gl – React components for Mapbox GL JS | Hacker News
August 30, 2017 - I have long standing hate-on for the TTC's inefficiency... buses that more-often-than-not travel in clusters where the first one is half full, the remaining ones are empty. The TTC constantly raises fares but does little to utilize technology to make themselves more efficient · You want to ...