Serve Tiles with S3

TL;DR
Serve static z/x/y map tiles directly from an S3 bucket over HTTP. Best for simple, public, low-traffic use cases.

Description

A web map requests tiles using the standard /z/x/y path structure. S3 responds with the corresponding file, e.g. 10/512/384.png.

This pattern serves static web map tiles (vector or raster in the z/x/y format) directly from an Amazon S3 bucket. S3 provides HTTP access, allowing you to use it as a basic tile server with minimal setup.

When to Use

• Prototyping or internal demos
• Public datasets with light to moderate traffic
• Regional or low-resolution base maps
• Situations where simplicity is more important than performance

Trade-offs

• No caching — every tile request hits S3
• Higher latency compared to CDN-backed solutions
• S3 request and data transfer costs add up quickly
• Not suitable for authenticated access

Alternatives

• Serve Tiles with CloudFront: Add caching and improve performance
• Serve Secure Tiles via API Gateway: Restrict access and add authorization

Resources

• Amazon S3 Documentation
• MapLibre GL JS
• Tippecanoe – for generating vector tiles