Leaflet has revolutionized interactive web mapping with its lightweight and flexible framework. Central to its success is the vibrant ecosystem of plugins that empower developers to create feature-rich maps effortlessly. Leaflet-Geoman is one of these plugins. In this post, we delve into the current state of the Leaflet plugin ecosystem, exploring its diversity and popularity. By understanding the most popular Leaflet plugins, you can make informed decisions to enhance your mapping applications with proven, community-supported tools.

As of September 2024, there are 551 plugins available on Leaflet’s Plugin Database. The plugins span across seven categories with 36 subcategories depending on the functionality of the plugin. To visually illustrate the variety of plugins, we created a treemap of the Leaflet Plugin categories with their respective subcategories as well as the count of plugins in each subcategory. The top three categories are:

Map interaction (138 plugins)
Overlay display (133 plugins)
Tile & image layers (84 plugins)

Treemap of Leaflet Plugin categories with their count of plugins by subcategory

Ranking Leaflet Plugins by Number of GitHub Stars

While the sheer number of plugins highlights the ecosystem's diversity, understanding their popularity provides deeper insights into their impact. Let us explore how Leaflet plugins rank based on GitHub stars, a strong indicator of community adoption. Not all of the plugins are hosted on GitHub, but 512 of them are. Aggregating the number of GitHub stars across the categories and subcategories, the top three most popular categories become:

Overlay display (21,438 stars)
Tile & image layers (13,347 stars)
Map interaction (11,327 stars)

The top three categories remain the same, map interaction is less popular when measured by github stars. We also created a treemap of the Leaflet Plugin categories with their respective subcategories now with the number of GitHub stars in each subcategory.

Treemap of Leaflet Plugin categories with their number of GitHub stars by subcategory

Top Leaflet Plugins

There are 14 plugins that have more than 1,000 GitHub stars. The table below summarises these. These plugins enhance interactive maps by providing advanced features such as marker clustering, geometry management, customizable tile providers, integration with frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, route searching, geocoding, and heatmap support. The most popular is the react-leaflet plugin, which offers React components for Leaflet maps with more than 5,000 stars.

Ranking	Category	Subcategory	Plugin	Description	Maintainer	Stars
1	Integration	Frameworks & Build Systems	react-leaflet	React components for Leaflet maps.	Paul Le Cam	5,099
2	Overlay Display	Clustering/Decluttering	Leaflet.markercluster	Marker clustering solution.	Dave Leaver	3,941
3	Interaction with Geometries/Features	Edit Geometries	Leaflet-Geoman	Geometry creation management for Leaflet maps.	Florian Bischof	2,185
4	Tile & Image Layers	Basemap Providers	leaflet-providers	Configurations for free tile providers like OSM, OpenCycleMap.	leaflet-extras members	2,148
5	Interaction with Geometries/Features	Edit Geometries	Leaflet.draw	Drawing tool for features like polygons and markers.	Jacob Toye	1,958
6	Integration	Frameworks & Build Systems	Vue2Leaflet	Vue.js framework that wraps Leaflet.	Mickaël KoRiGaN	1,953
7	Tile & Image Layers	Vector Tiles	geojson-vt	Library for slicing GeoJSON data into vector tiles.	Mapbox	1,877
8	Tile & Image Layers	Basemap Providers	Esri Leaflet	Tools for using ArcGIS services with Leaflet.	Patrick Arlt	1,604
9	Overlay Display	Heatmaps	Leaflet.heat	A tiny, simple, and fast Leaflet heatmap plugin.	Vladimir Agafonkin	1,543
10	Integration	Frameworks & Build Systems	Angular Leaflet directive	AngularJS web framework for Leaflet.	David Rubert	1,503
11	Overlay Display	Markers & Renderers	Leaflet.Awesome-Markers	Font Awesome icons/Twitter Bootstrap icons.	Lennard Voogdt	1,277
12	Miscellaneous	Routing	Leaflet Routing Machine	Control for route search with via points, displaying itinerary and alternative routes.	Per Liedman	1,075
13	Miscellaneous	Geocoding	Leaflet GeoSearch	Small geocoding plugin that brings geosearching to Leaflet.	Stephan Meijer	1,031
14	Tile & Image Layers	Basemap Providers	Leaflet.ChineseTmsProviders	Contains configurations for various Chinese tile providers.	Tao Huang	1,008

Leaflet-Geoman, the Leading Leaflet Plugin in Geometry Interaction

At Geoman, we develop an application that gives your Leaflet maps the ability to interact with and handle geospatial data. Our Geoman-Leaflet plugin belongs in the Edit geometries subcategory and in the Interaction with geometries/features category. It currently ranks number one in both the category and subcategory as measured by the number of GitHub stars. Looking at the overall ranking across the 551 Leaflet Plugins, Leaflet-Geoman ranks number three by the number of GitHub stars. We are grateful for the tremendous support from the open-source community and are excited to continue extending the capabilities of Leaflet.

To dive further into the data, visit the Leaflet Plugin Database here.

From the blog - Category: community

The state of the Leaflet Plugin ecosystem