nowfound

AI · alternatives · 2026

IB

24 alternatives to I built custom GIS Engine for investment mapping

Hi, Out of desperation using slow and expensive ESRI ArcGIS, we're building a custom GIS engine to facilitate presentation layers for urban mapping that is easier to code and communicate with other smaller applications. The app we built was meant to help local people or investors perform preliminary due diligence using location-specific parameters (demographic profile, zoning regulation, business requirements, POIs, indexes, and potential calculator). With this app, we're helping people to assess which location is best to build their next business. We also managed to add machine learning…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I built custom GIS Engine for investment mapping launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    For the past few months, I've been working on a website that answers two different questions: - Where in my city have the best travel times to all the things and people I care about? - Given a listing, how far is it from all the things and people I care about? Personally this was fueled by my own frustrations when I was apartment hunting in NYC. I was frustrating to have to juggle so many Google Maps tabs when I was evaluating a listing, and it was also annoying to not have full confidence that I was even searching in the right places. I wanted to be close to work, a Trader Joe's, and a…

    2025 · theretowhere.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    I've been working on this project for about 4 years. It began as terrain only because world wide elevation data was publicly available. I then added buildings from OpenStreetMap (crowd sourced) and more recently from Overture Maps data. Some computer vision/machine learning advancements [1] in the past few years have made it possible to estimate tree canopy heights using satellite imagery alone making it possible to finally add trees to the map. The data isn't perfect, but it's within +/- 3 meters of so. Good enough to give a general idea for any location on Earth. Happy to answer…

    2024 · shademap.app · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Atlas is the AI-native GIS. Build maps, dashboards, and spatial workflows from a conversation — GIS-grade analysis, accessible to your whole team. Trusted by energy developers, asset managers, and field operations teams.

    2024 · atlas.co · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    A design platform for radically custom maps

    2014 · mapbox.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Viberia▲146

    Hey HN, This is my take on the agent harness. Everything on an isometric map. Agents are grouped into "buildings" that run in a sequence or a loop; e.g., the CodeForge has an agent that writes a PRD, another one that implements, and a third that reviews. Everything is customizable, you build your own buildings/teams however you want. It's a Tauri app, really light (about 8x less energy than the closest competitor I benchmarked, so it actually runs from a coffee shop on battery). It's macOS only for now, but ping me if you are willing to test the Windows or Linux version. I've been…

    May 2026 · getviberia.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Do more with maps - Pay a lot less

    2016 · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Trails▲81

    Hey all, Justin here. I previously built Phind, the AI search engine for developers. One of the biggest problems we had there was figuring out what went wrong with bad searches. We had tons of searches per day, but less than 1% of users gave any explicit feedback. So we were either manually digging through searches or making general system improvements and hoping they helped. This problem gets harder with agents. Traces are longer and more complex. It takes more effort to review them, so I'm building a tool that lets you analyze LLM outputs directly to help developers of LLM apps and agents…

    Jan 2026 · trails-red.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Tasmap▲111

    Hi there, I just saw a cool city map project (https://github.com/originalankur/maptoposter) gaining some attention on Hacker News. I'm building a similar product so I want to share it with you. If you're interested in beautiful maps, maybe give Tasmap a try. It's not just a static, beautiful map; it's dynamic and interactive, and connected with articles. There are 20+ well designed themes, and if you're not good at design, you can even have AI design it for you. You can embed it in your site or install it as an app on your phone. You can create a beautiful and useful map.…

    2020 · tasmap.app · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Atlasly▲86

    Your site did 5 days of research. We did it in 60 seconds.

    Mar 2026 · atlasly.app · its alternatives →

  10. 10IB

    I love culture + travel, and one of my favorite pastimes is dropping into random streets on Google Street View. I just LOVE getting a tiny snippet into how people live, the architecture, and discovering hidden corners of places I'll probably never visit. I'm kinda weird like that. When AI came along, I started asking it to explain what I was looking at - and I learned a ton. I couldn't stop using this combo. So I built Streetwhip. It's kinda like reverse Geoguessr - instead of guessing where you are, you get educated about places as if you had a smart local guide with you. What used to be…

    2025 · streetwhip.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11IM

    Hi HN, I built a little tool to help me get better at remembering country locations on the map: https://learn-worldmap.netlify.app/ It's made from plain HTML/CSS/JS, and not intended to make any money or anything. Just thought that maybe someone else may enjoy it. Also of course happy about any feedback! Cheerz.

    2023 · learn-worldmap.netlify.app · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    The API for data-driven mapping

    2015 · its alternatives →

  13. 13PN

    Hello HN, Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I've created a service that creates a "flow map" of your mobile app. Check it out at: https://prodscape.net. The goal is to reduce last-minute regressions, promote holistic discussion, and help develop more ownership within an organization. This is something that I would have liked to have had when I was working at a big company. Some caveats: 1.) Only iOS is currently supported but Android-support will be coming soon. 2.) You need a developer-signed IPA file (see the guide on creating an IPA file here:…

    2022 · its alternatives →

  14. 14LC

    Im working on a mind mapping app that would allow for integration of gamification features and be nicer and easier to remember. I was missing more advanced graphics from apps and being able to treat it as my note taking and learning tool. i.e. how (and why?) should I remember a mind map if it looks the same like all other maps and all i can do is pick couple of shapes and dashed/dotted lines? this simply doesnt work with my brain so i decided to create something better :) map on page is a preview of this, but im curious about the quiz, typing games and cheatsheet, would love some…

    Oct 2025 · mindmapsonline.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A while back, I built a simple app to track stocks. It pulled market data and generated daily reports based on my risk tolerance. Basically a personal investment assistant. It worked well enough that I kept going. Now, the same framework helps me with real estate: comparing neighborhoods, checking flood risk, weather patterns, school zones, old vs. new builds, etc. It’s a messy, multi-variable decision—which turns out to be a great use case for AI agents. Instead of ChatGPT or Grok 4, I use mcp-agent, which lets me build a persistent, multi-agent system that pulls live data, remembers my…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    AI map finding top spots for property investment

    2025 · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    Locale▲2

    Make location-based insights part of your everyday decisions

    2019 · locale.ai · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hey! I'm a solo developer having fun learning Go. I have a side hustle and wanted to implement currency localization. I could use existing IP databases, but hosting on serverless is slow. So I built my own. I was surprised how fun it can be to use Go, and it's fast. Thankfully, Go's speed makes up for my dodgy code. Anyway, I'd love to get some feedback on my website/API. After a few weeks of testing and losing money on ads, I'm confident it's very reliable. This isn't a promo. It's basicly free (30k lookups/month), so there's no need to pay. Any advice or tips on how to grow and…

    2024 · ipflare.io · its alternatives →

  19. 19IM

    Hi HN, I made SmartMap — a tool where you ask an open-ended question on maps, like: - "Where can I find coworking cafes with power sockets and Wi-Fi in Shibuya, Tokyo?" - "Places that inspired Studio Ghibli movies in Japan" You can also ask it to plot interactive journeys, like: - "Places Alexandra David-Néel visited on her way to Lhasa" - "Train stops along the original Orient Express route" It returns a live, interactive map with the results plotted as pins. Originally built this to scratch my own itch while traveling and researching or learning about new places. SmartMap makes that step…

    2025 · smartmap.space · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    Mapiq▲3

    This is similar to Google MyMaps. I wanted something more polished, collaboration enabled and fast (I love building multiplayer apps). Think of it like Excalidraw + maps. As a digital nomad, I have different collections of cafes, shops, random notes that I want to put on maps. You can even share your live location with collaborators. Feel free to play around. Choose Guest to avoid sign-up. If you want to build something similar on your own - yjs, maplibregljs, openfreemaps for tiles. Cheers.

    Aug 2026 · supakit.app · its alternatives →

  21. 21WA

    Today you can easily adopt AI coding tools because you have git for branching and rolling back if AI writes bad code. We haven't seen this same capability for data and decided to build it ourselves. Nile is a new kind of data lake, purpose built for using with AI. It can act as your data engineer or data analyst creating new tables and rolling back bad changes in seconds. We support real versions for data, schema, and ETL. We'd love your feedback on any part of what we are building - https://getnile.ai/ What do you think?

    Jan 2026 · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hey everyone, I wanted to see if I could build something like DataFa.st myself, so I made MochiAnalytics. I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. It’s got all the bells and whistles a small team or solo founder would need to track campaigns and to see which channel is driving revenue. It’s a cheaper analytics tool for side projects, indie hackers, and small apps. I honestly wish I could make it free, but it still needs servers, a database, and a backend to keep event ingestion running 24/7, so there are real costs behind it. I’m still working on it and will keep adding more features…

    Jul 2026 · mochianalytics.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23MO

    Hi HN! We're happy to announce the launch of Mapedia.org, an open source crowdsourced learning map! Mapedia is a new kind of learning platform at the crossroad between Wikipedia, Google Maps and Khan Academy: a learning map built collaboratively to support online learners to learn any topic seamlessly. We built an interactive learning map of topics to be able to visualize the different fields of knowledge, what concepts are included in them and how they relate to each other. This allows for curiosity based exploration, identifying knowledge gaps (unknown unknowns) and figuring out what to…

    2022 · mapedia.org · its alternatives →

  24. 24MA

    Hi HN, I'm a solo developer learning to code, and I'd love to share my second real project: MapMyLearn, an AI-powered app that automatically generates personalized learning paths based on any topic you input. What it does: Takes a topic (e.g. "history of capitalism", "learn Rust", or "data storytelling") Uses AI to break it down into a structured course with modules and submodules Each submodule includes: - Detailed, pedagogical content (developed based on online sources to mitigate hallucinations) - A quiz of 10 questions - Recommended resources - An AI chatbot for Q&A - Optional audio…

    2025 · its alternatives →

Also compare

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →