FlatGeobuf Converter — Convert FGB Files Online Free
FlatGeobuf (.fgb) is a binary OGC Community Standard optimised for cloud-native geospatial workflows. It supports HTTP range requests for partial reads and is significantly faster than GeoJSON for large datasets. Maparz converts FlatGeobuf to any supported format and converts GIS data to FlatGeobuf for cloud deployment.
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About FlatGeobuf format
FlatGeobuf is a modern, high-performance binary format for geospatial vector data, designed for efficient streaming and cloud-native workflows. Based on FlatBuffers, it supports random access via HTTP range requests, making it ideal for serving large datasets directly from object storage like S3 without a tile server. FlatGeobuf is an OGC Community Standard and is supported by GDAL 3.1+, QGIS, Mapbox, and the GeoJSON ecosystem. Its compact binary encoding is significantly faster to parse than GeoJSON for large datasets.
Strengths
- +Extremely fast read/write — binary encoding
- +Supports HTTP range requests for cloud-native access
- +OGC Community Standard
- +Compact — much smaller than equivalent GeoJSON
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Frequently asked questions
Q.What makes FlatGeobuf different from GeoJSON?
FlatGeobuf is a binary format optimised for streaming — it supports HTTP range requests so web clients read only the features they need without downloading the entire file. GeoJSON is text-based and human-readable but much slower for large datasets.
Q.Can I convert FlatGeobuf to Shapefile for ArcGIS?
Yes. Upload your .fgb file, select Shapefile, and download the resulting ZIP bundle. The Shapefile can be opened in ArcGIS, QGIS, or any Shapefile-compatible GIS.
Q.How do I create a FlatGeobuf file?
Use Maparz to convert any supported format (GeoJSON, Shapefile, KML, GeoPackage, etc.) to FlatGeobuf. You can also use GDAL's ogr2ogr, QGIS, or Tippecanoe.