GIS Cloud vs GRASS GIS
GIS Cloud
giscloud.com
GRASS GIS
grass.osgeo.orgSide by side
| Figure | GIS Cloud | GRASS GIS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 1 |
| Spec score · GIS Software | 8.7 (#3) | 8.2 (#13) |
| Spec score · Geographic Information Systems | 8.6 (#2) | 8.1 (#7) |
| Audience | GIS Cloud describes solutions for water and pipeline management, electric utilities, telecommunications, roadworks, tree inventory and inspection, retail, smart cities, natural resources, and public city maps. | GRASS is used by scientists, developers, researchers, government agencies, universities and private companies. |
| Founded | 2007 | 1982 |
| Integrations | GIS Cloud offers QGIS and ArcMap publisher plugins, plus REST and JavaScript APIs for connecting to the platform or building GIS-enabled web applications. | GRASS integrates with QGIS and R, and supports PostgreSQL and SQLite database interfaces. |
| Purpose | GIS Cloud provides web and mobile apps for managing and collecting data, with maps that teams can share privately, with collaborators, or publicly. | GRASS is a computational engine for raster, vector and geospatial processing, including terrain, ecosystem, hydrology, data management and imagery work. |
| Security | GIS Cloud says it has been ISO 27001 certified since November 2025 and encrypts data in transit with role-based permissions. | The roadmap commits to vulnerability detection tools, fixing reported security issues and maintaining CI workflows for standards compliance. |
| Support | GIS Cloud says its solution consultants reply to demo, question, or project inquiries within one business day. | GRASS offers worldwide community support plus commercial consulting, training and custom-development services. |
Plans
GIS Cloud
- Publisher pluginsFree
- Track$5 a month
- Map Viewer$12 a month
- Mobile Data Collection$25 a month
- Map Editor$75 a month
- Map Portal$79 a month
- On-premises & CrowdsourcingPriced on request
In their own words
GIS Cloud
GIS Cloud provides web and mobile tools for mapping, data management and field collection, with maps that teams can share privately, with collaborators or publicly. Map Editor supports vector and raster formats, multiple layers and basemaps, and drawing points, lines and polygons. Listed data sources include WMS, WFS, WMTS, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Excel, CSV, Bing, OpenStreetMap and Mapbox. Mobile Data Collection uses custom forms to gather points, lines and polygons online or offline on Android and iOS; offline records stay on the device and sync when connectivity returns. QGIS and ArcMap publisher plugins, REST and JavaScript APIs provide additional connections. AI Form Fill can suggest form values from photos or voice, which users can review, edit or revert before saving. GIS Cloud says data is hosted on AWS in the US by default, with EU and Australia regions and on-premises deployment available. Plans include Track at $5 a month per asset, Map Viewer at $12 a month billed annually, Mobile Data Collection at $25 a month billed annually, Map Editor at $75 a month billed annually and Map Portal at $79 a month billed annually. The Geocoder is in beta for beta customers only.
GRASS GIS
GRASS GIS is a geospatial processing system for raster, vector, and other geographic data, including terrain, ecosystem, hydrology, data management, and imagery work. It contains more than 500 modules for processing and rendering geographic data, with tools for 3D voxel, temporal, image-processing, and spatial-statistics tasks alongside raster, terrain, hydrological, and vector analysis. Through GDAL-OGR, it supports nearly all common GIS file formats. Interfaces include a graphical user interface, command line, C API, Python, Jupyter Notebook, and WPS. GRASS integrates with QGIS and R and provides PostgreSQL and SQLite database interfaces; its official Addons repository has more than 300 extensions. It is free and open source under GPL (>=v2), with no warranty. The listed platforms include Linux, macOS, Windows, API, web, and self-hosted deployment. Prebuilt macOS applications are signed and notarized. Support includes a worldwide community as well as commercial consulting, training, and custom development.