Long list of geospatial analysis tools. Geospatial analysis, or just spatial analysis, is an approach to applying statistical analysis and other analytic techniques to data which has a geographical or spatial aspect.
A curated list of resources related to DuckDB’s geospatial capabilities (the spatial extension and related ecosystem): docs, tutorials, benchmarks, repos, integrations, videos, and community discussions.
DuckDB’s
spatialextension brings PostGIS-like spatial SQL to an in-process OLAP engine, with built-in support for many vector formats via GDAL and a growing ecosystem of community extensions (e.g., H3).
- Official
- Core docs: functions & I/O
- Blog posts & articles
- Performance, indexing & optimization
- Interoperability (PostGIS, GDAL, tooling)
- Community extensions (H3, A5, etc.)
- Repositories & tools
- Web / WASM / Browser
- Servers & APIs
- Books & courses
- Talks & videos
- Community discussions
- Spatial Extension — Overview (DuckDB Docs) - Official overview, install/load instructions, and entry point to the spatial feature set.
- PostGEESE? Introducing the DuckDB Spatial Extension (DuckDB Blog) - Official announcement post introducing
GEOMETRY, spatial SQL, reprojection, and format I/O. - Spatial Joins in DuckDB (DuckDB Blog) - Official deep dive into spatial join internals and performance (incl.
SPATIAL_JOINoperator behavior). - duckdb/duckdb-spatial (GitHub) - Source repository for DuckDB’s spatial extension (implementation, issues, PRs, discussions).
- DuckDB Repositories (Docs) - Official list of DuckDB project repositories (useful for contributors).
- Spatial Functions (DuckDB Docs) - Complete function index, including constructors, predicates, transforms, and table functions.
- GDAL Integration (DuckDB Docs) - How DuckDB bundles GDAL, supported drivers, and GDAL-based COPY/export behavior.
- Extensions Overview (DuckDB Docs) - General extension lifecycle (install/load/autoload) across DuckDB clients.
- Getting started with modern GIS using DuckDB (MotherDuck) - Practical intro to spatial concepts + DuckDB workflow (read/process/export).
- Mastering Geospatial Analysis with DuckDB Spatial and MotherDuck (MotherDuck) - Beginner-focused guide with hands-on queries and real datasets.
- DuckDB: The Indispensable Geospatial Tool You Didn’t Know You Were Missing (CloudNativeGeo) - Why DuckDB is a great fit for file-native geospatial analytics (GeoParquet, large datasets).
- DuckDB is Probably the Most Important Geospatial Software of the Last Decade (dbreunig.com) - Opinionated overview of DuckDB’s impact on modern geospatial workflows.
- DuckDB for Geospatial (geo.rocks) - Performance-oriented walkthrough (large points data, HTTPFS patterns).
- Geospatial Analysis using DuckDB (Spatial Dev Guru) - Step-by-step tutorial using public datasets (points, transformations, queries).
- Unlocking Cloud Data: Reading & Transforming Spatial Data with DuckDB (Philippe Massicotte) - Querying remote Parquet and building geometries with DuckDB Spatial.
- Wrangling and Joining 130M Points with DuckDB + the Open Source Spatial Stack (Dewey Dunnington) - Large-scale point workflows and join patterns with the broader spatial stack.
- SedonaDB vs DuckDB vs PostGIS: Which Spatial SQL Engine is Fastest? (Matt Forrest) - Benchmark-style comparison for spatial analytics workloads.
- Geospatial Analysis with Ibis and DuckDB (Redux) (Ibis Project) - Reproduces a DuckDB Spatial workflow via Ibis APIs.
- Ibis + DuckDB Geospatial: A Match Made on Earth (Ibis Project) - Spatial analysis patterns using Ibis as a friendly layer over DuckDB.
- More From The Duck Pond — Using DuckDB in ArcGIS Pro (Esri Community) - ETL patterns and GIS tooling integration.
- How to read OSM data with DuckDB (Medium) - Practical OSM/PBF ingestion concepts and data modeling.
- Spatial Joins in DuckDB (DuckDB Blog) - Official deep dive into spatial join performance and the
SPATIAL_JOINoperator. - Getting Started with Modern GIS using DuckDB (MotherDuck) - End-to-end tutorial: load spatial data, run spatial SQL, and visualize results with a practical example.
- A Beginner’s Guide to Geospatial with DuckDB Spatial and MotherDuck (Simon Späti) - Beginner-friendly walkthrough of installing DuckDB Spatial and running common GIS tasks.
- DuckDB: The Indispensable Geospatial Tool You Didn’t Know You Were Missing (Chris Holmes) - Narrative guide showing why DuckDB is a strong fit for large, file-based geospatial analytics.
- DuckDB for Geospatial (Geography & Coding) - Practical article with examples and performance discussion for large datasets.
- DuckDB Extensions You'll Actually Use in 2026 - DuckDB Extensions You'll Actually Use in 2026
- Spatial Queries in DuckDB with R-tree and H3 Indexing (Architecture & Performance) - Techniques for fast spatial filtering (H3 coarse indexing strategy).
- Using DuckDB’s Hilbert Function with GeoParquet (CloudNativeGeo) - Improving locality / filtering by spatial sorting before writing Parquet.
- Efficient spatial join? (duckdb-spatial Discussion #303) - Practical guidance and Q&A on point-in-polygon join patterns.
- Working with DuckDB (GDAL Docs) - Official GDAL tutorial covering DuckDB + extensions (spatial/parquet/httpfs/aws), and OGR usage patterns.
- PostGIS meets DuckDB: Crunchy Bridge for Analytics goes Spatial (Crunchy Data) - Hybrid Postgres/PostGIS + DuckDB Spatial approach for fast analytics on external files.
- Spatial Analytics (Crunchy Data Use Case) - Overview of delegating some PostGIS operations to DuckDB Spatial on GeoParquet.
- DuckDB Community Extensions — Overview (Docs) - How community extensions work and how to install them.
- DuckDB Community Extensions announcement (DuckDB Blog) - Official intro to the community extension repository and workflow.
- h3 — DuckDB Community Extension (Docs) - Official community extension page for H3 hex indexing (install, functions, examples).
- a5 — DuckDB Community Extension (Docs) - Official community extension page for A5 DGGS / hierarchical indexing.
- tobilg/duckdb_featureserv (GitHub) - Lightweight geospatial feature server for DuckDB + duckdb-spatial (OGC API Features).
- Query-farm/a5 (GitHub) - A5 geospatial indexing extension implementation (community extension).
- isaacbrodsky/h3-duckdb (GitHub) - H3 extension repo implementing the H3 API in DuckDB.
- davidgasquez/awesome-duckdb (GitHub) - Broader Awesome list for DuckDB (often includes spatial-related ecosystem links).
- paleolimbot/duckdb-geography - Community “GEOGRAPHY” extension using S2 Geometry for spherical/geodesic calculations (experimental, separate from the core spatial extension).
- DuckDB Extensions, in DuckDB-Wasm! (DuckDB Blog) - Official post on extension support inside duckdb-wasm.
- duckdb/duckdb-wasm-extensions-ci (GitHub) - CI + docs for WASM extensions (includes spatial-related internals/limitations notes).
- A DuckDB-Wasm Web Mapping Experiment with Parquet (SparkGeo) - Browser-based mapping experiment using DuckDB-Wasm over remote Parquet.
- GeoParquet viewer with DuckDB spatial (Observable) - Interactive notebook demonstrating GeoParquet/GeoJSON viewing with DuckDB spatial.
- Honeycomb Maps - An enterprise geospatial visualization platform that utilizes DuckDB-Wasm under-the-hood.
- galileo.world - A browser-based interactive platform to instantly visualize and explore geospatial files and MotherDuck datasets, built with DuckDB-Wasm and deck.gl.
- duckdb_featureserv (GitHub) - OGC API Features server on top of DuckDB spatial (good base for WFS-like services).
- tobilg/duckdb-tileserver - Lightweight Mapbox Vector Tile (MVT) tileserver for DuckDB + duckdb-spatial (Go), useful once your data lives in DuckDB tables/views.
- Spatial Data Management with DuckDB (Qiusheng Wu) - Book + materials covering spatial SQL in DuckDB with examples.
- giswqs/duckdb-spatial (GitHub) - Companion code/examples for “Spatial Data Management with DuckDB”.
- Is DuckDB the Secret to Unlocking Your GIS Potential? (YouTube) - Beginner-friendly walkthrough using DuckDB spatial + Python to build a heatmap.
- Is DuckDB the Secret to Unlocking Your GIS Potential? (MotherDuck video page) - Same video with MotherDuck context and related links.
- The Journey of DuckDB Spatial Extension (YouTube) - Interview-style video on the spatial extension’s roadmap and practical demos.
- Geospatial Data Lakes! Maps from MotherDuck (duckdb) (YouTube) - Mapping-oriented talk/demo using MotherDuck/DuckDB for large-scale points.
- Is DuckDB the Secret to Unlocking Your GIS Potential? (MotherDuck) - Video tutorial for beginners: install spatial extension and run common GIS queries.
- DuckDB Spatial: Supercharged Geospatial SQL! (GeoPython 2024) - Talk introducing DuckDB Spatial capabilities, typical workflows, and demos.
- DuckDB Spatial Extension — Q&A / Discussions (GitHub) - Main community forum for duckdb-spatial questions.
- Issues — duckdb/duckdb-spatial (GitHub) - Bug reports and feature requests (useful to track roadmap topics).
- Extensions (spatial extension) with DuckDB (Observable Forum) - Notes/issues using DuckDB spatial from Observable environments.
- DuckDB’s Spatial Extension (Reddit thread) - Community feedback and use cases.
- kraina-ai/quackosm - Read OpenStreetMap PBF with DuckDB, extract/filter, and produce analytics-friendly outputs (GeoParquet workflows).
- ajl2718/whereabouts - Fast local geocoding in Python that uses DuckDB as its query engine (no external geocoding API required).
- duckdb-extension-spatial (PyPI) - Helper package for installing/loading the DuckDB spatial extension from Python environments.
- cidree/duckspatial - R package bridging
{sf}with DuckDB spatial for memory-efficient vector analytics on large data.
- Ibis + DuckDB geospatial (redux) - Geospatial workflows using Ibis with DuckDB as the backend (expressions → SQL).
- From query to plot: Exploring GeoParquet Overture Maps with Ibis + DuckDB - End-to-end example including visualization.
- developmentseed/lonboard - GPU-accelerated interactive vector viz in Jupyter and Python.
- Lonboard docs: DuckDB Spatial - Pass DuckDB queries directly into visualizations / layers.
- QDuckDB (QGIS provider plugin docs) - QGIS data provider plugin for reading DuckDB databases as map layers.
- QDuckDB source (GitLab) - Plugin repository.
- QDuckDB on QGIS Plugin Repo - Install via QGIS plugin manager.
- Kepler.gl - Open-source geospatial analytics tool; includes DuckDB-Wasm-based workflows for client-side filtering/aggregation (varies by deployment).
- duckdblabs/duckgl - Geospatial visualization for DuckDB using deck.gl and MapLibre (experimental).