# Cartopy vs prettymaps

## Key differences

- prettymaps has 8.8× as many GitHub stars as Cartopy (14.3K vs 1.6K).
- Cartopy had more development activity over the last 12 months: 226 commits vs 9.
- Cartopy is downloaded 3254× as often on PyPI (260.3K vs 80 per week).
- Cartopy is licensed under BSD-3-Clause; prettymaps under AGPL-3.0.
- Cartopy is the older project: its repository was created in 2012, prettymaps's in 2021.

| | Cartopy | prettymaps |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Cartographic projections and geospatial data plotting with matplotlib. | Draws stylized maps from OpenStreetMap data, using osmnx and matplotlib. |
| GitHub stars | 1,625 | 14,321 |
| Commits (12 months) | 226 | 9 |
| Contributors | 127 | 20 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Status | Active | Maintained |
| Install | `pip install Cartopy` | `pip install prettymaps` |

Source: https://awesomedataviz.com/compare/cartopy-vs-prettymaps/ · Data updated 2026-11-01 · Content: CC BY 4.0, Awesome Dataviz (https://awesomedataviz.com).