Setting up a Mapbox account is highly recommended for this workshop, but not required.
For this workshop, we’re going to use the web map library Mapbox GL JS for our hands-on section to build a web map. Mapbox offers a robust suite of tools for building custom web-native mapping applications. The company has been around since the early 2010s and has remained a leader in offering innovative toolkits for web cartographers and web map developers.
Mapbox GL JS Pricing
Mapbox GL JS is not entirely free, but it offers a generous free tier, often sufficient for testing and experimenting with a limited number of datasets and maps. More details about pricing can be found on Mapbox’s pricing model description page and the Invoices and Billing guide.
The hands-on portion of this workshop will remain within the free tier, so no payment information is required.
Create Your Mapbox Account
Your Mapbox account will give you access to all the resources offered by Mapbox.
To Do
- Head to account.mapbox.com/auth/signup.
- Select “Individual” for account type, fill in your information, agree to the terms, and submit.
- Check your inbox for a confirmation email and verify your account.
- Add your address for billing information – you don’t need to provide payment information!
Once you’ve completed this step, you’ll have access to your Mapbox account dashboard.
Create Your Mapbox Access Token
Your Mapbox access token will provide API access to Mapbox GL JS so that we can build and test our maps locally and eventually deploy them to the web. For this workshop, we will create a new access token for testing, which you can optionally delete afterward. Mapbox’s documentation provides more information about securely using your access tokens.
To Do
- From your Mapbox account dashboard, click on “Tokens” in the left navigation.
- At the top of the page, click the button ”+ Create a token”.
- Give your token a name such as LDW2025-test.
- Optional: If you already know where you will be hosting your map, provide a URL restriction.
- Click the “Create token” button and confirm your password.