Mapcrafter vs Worldlens
Mapcrafter
github.comWorldlens
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Mapcrafter | Worldlens |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Minecraft World Map Viewers | 8.2 (#3) | 7.1 (#20) |
| License | Mapcrafter is free software available under the GPL license. | The repository states that Worldlens is MIT licensed. |
| Purpose | Mapcrafter is a high-performance Minecraft map renderer written in C++. | Worldlens is a TypeScript port of BlueMap for rendering Minecraft worlds into 3D maps and browsing them. |
Plans
In their own words
Mapcrafter
Mapcrafter is free, GPL-licensed software that renders Minecraft worlds as images for viewing in a web browser with Leaflet.js. It offers top-down 2D and isometric 3D views, four world rotations, and day, night, and cave render modes. Overlays can display details such as slime-spawn and nighttime-monster locations, and markers can be generated from world data. Configuration files control which worlds are rendered, the views, and other rendering parameters. Listed capabilities include biome colors, incremental rendering, and multithreading.
Mapcrafter runs on Linux and Unix-like systems such as Mac OS; Windows support is experimental. Building it requires a C++ compiler, CMake, make, and libraries including libpng, libjpeg, and Boost components. Debian and Ubuntu packages are available. It supports offline viewing, server maps, and dimension maps, and requires Anvil world format and Minecraft 1.6 resource packs. The maintainer says new feature development is no longer possible, although issues and pull requests may still be addressed.
Worldlens
Worldlens is a TypeScript port of BlueMap for rendering Minecraft worlds into 3D maps and browsing them. The project describes a Windows desktop app, two container images, and a separate Wharf desktop app for deploying a container locally or over SSH. The desktop app can render local worlds offline using BlueMap’s Java renderer, which requires Java, or connect to remote BlueMap servers through a token-gated proxy. A standalone CLI renders and serves the map web app, with a watch mode for map updates. Rendering can also run on another machine over SSH, in Docker, or through GitHub Actions. Documented integrations include Docker, SSH, GitHub Actions, GitHub Pages, remote BlueMap servers, and Home Assistant boolean entities for scheduled settings. The stated target world versions range from Minecraft 1.12.2 through 26.x. The repository is MIT licensed. Its public 1.0 compatibility contract is Windows-only, and Windows releases are unsigned and may prompt a SmartScreen unknown-publisher warning. An add-on system, static export, and multi-server dashboard are listed as future work.