10 Free GIS Datasets You Can Download and Use Today
Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis depends on quality data, and the good news is that some of the most useful spatial datasets in the world are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Whether you are a researcher, urban planner, student, or developer building location-aware applications, these ten datasets cover a broad range of use cases and geographies. Each one is openly licensed, actively maintained, and ready to use in tools like QGIS, ArcGIS, PostGIS, or any programming environment with spatial libraries.
1. OpenStreetMap (OSM)
Source: openstreetmap.org / Geofabrik
Format: PBF, Shapefile, GeoJSON
Coverage: Global
OpenStreetMap is the largest collaborative mapping project in the world, containing billions of nodes, ways, and relations contributed by volunteers. The data covers roads, buildings, land use, waterways, points of interest, and much more. You can download the entire planet file or extract data by region through Geofabrik’s download server, which provides daily-updated extracts for every continent, country, and many sub-national regions.
OSM is the backbone of countless commercial and open-source applications. Its licensing under the Open Database License (ODbL) allows free use with attribution. For quick, targeted extracts without downloading large files, tools like Overpass Turbo allow you to query specific features within a bounding box.
Best for: Basemaps, routing, urban analysis, points of interest, building footprints.
2. Natural Earth
Source: naturalearthdata.com
Format: Shapefile, GeoJSON
Coverage: Global
Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset made by volunteers and supported by the North American Cartographic Information Society. It provides physical and cultural vector and raster data at three scales: 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m. Physical features include coastlines, rivers, lakes, glaciers, and ocean bathymetry. Cultural features include country boundaries, disputed territories, populated places, airports, and railroads.
The data is meticulously curated for cartographic accuracy and visual balance, making it ideal for small-scale thematic maps. Because it is in the public domain, it carries no licensing restrictions whatsoever.
Best for: Thematic maps, cartographic projects, country-level analysis, reference layers.
3. USGS National Map
Source: apps.nationalmap.gov
Format: Shapefile, GeoTIFF, LAS, FileGDB
Coverage: United States
The United States Geological Survey’s National Map is one of the most comprehensive collections of geospatial data for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories. Available layers include elevation (Digital Elevation Models at 1-meter and 1/3 arc-second resolution), hydrography, transportation, structures, boundaries, land cover, and orthoimagery.
The 3DEP (3D Elevation Program) lidar datasets are particularly valuable for terrain modeling, flood analysis, and forestry applications. The TNM Download application provides a tile-based interface for selecting and downloading data within any area of interest.
Best for: Elevation modeling, hydrological analysis, US-focused infrastructure mapping.
4. Copernicus Open Access Hub / Sentinel Data
Source: scihub.copernicus.eu (transitioning to Copernicus Data Space)
Format: SAFE (GeoTIFF internally), NetCDF
Coverage: Global
The European Space Agency’s Copernicus programme provides free satellite imagery through the Sentinel mission constellation. Sentinel-2 offers 10-meter resolution multispectral imagery (13 bands) with a revisit time of roughly five days at the equator, making it exceptional for land cover analysis, agriculture monitoring, and vegetation indices such as NDVI. Sentinel-1 provides synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery useful for flood mapping and change detection in cloudy regions.
Data is freely downloadable after creating a free account. The newer Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem provides improved access speeds and cloud-native access via STAC API.
Best for: Land cover, vegetation analysis, flood mapping, agricultural monitoring, change detection.
5. Global Administrative Areas (GADM)
Source: gadm.org
Format: Shapefile, GeoJSON, KMZ, RDS (R)
Coverage: Global
GADM provides administrative boundary data for all countries in the world at multiple levels of detail. Level 0 is the country boundary, Level 1 covers states and provinces, Level 2 covers counties and districts, and some countries extend to Level 3 and beyond. The dataset is particularly useful when you need consistent, nested administrative hierarchies for choropleth maps or regional statistics.
GADM is available for free for academic, non-commercial, and personal use. The data is regularly updated to reflect changes in country borders and sub-national administrative reorganizations.
Best for: Choropleth maps, administrative overlays, regional statistics, boundary analysis.
6. WorldPop
Source: worldpop.org
Format: GeoTIFF
Coverage: Global (country-specific and global grids)
WorldPop, developed at the University of Southampton, provides high-resolution gridded population datasets for countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with global coverage also available. The data disaggregates population counts to 100-meter or 1-kilometer grid cells using statistical modelling that incorporates census data, satellite imagery, land cover, and settlement maps.
In addition to total population counts, WorldPop offers age and sex structures, urban/rural classification, and birth and mortality rates. All data is freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Best for: Public health, humanitarian logistics, service accessibility analysis, demographic mapping.
7. NASA EARTHDATA / SRTM Elevation
Source: earthdata.nasa.gov
Format: HGT, GeoTIFF
Coverage: Global (between 60N and 56S latitude)
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), flown in 2000, produced the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth ever assembled. NASA distributes SRTM data at 1 arc-second resolution (approximately 30 meters globally) through its Earthdata portal at no cost after free registration.
Beyond SRTM, NASA Earthdata is an enormous repository of climate, atmospheric, ocean, and land datasets from dozens of missions and instruments. Products range from MODIS land surface temperature to GRACE groundwater anomalies to GPM precipitation data, all available in standard geospatial formats.
Best for: Terrain analysis, slope and aspect calculations, watershed delineation, global DEMs.
8. OpenTopography
Source: opentopography.org
Format: LAZ, GeoTIFF
Coverage: Selective global coverage, strong in North America and Australasia
OpenTopography is a portal that aggregates high-resolution topographic data, including lidar point clouds and derived raster products, from community contributors and government agencies. Many datasets reach sub-meter vertical accuracy, which is essential for applications such as floodplain mapping, landslide analysis, archaeological site survey, and coastal erosion studies.
The platform provides a web-based processing interface that allows you to clip data to a custom area and download derived products such as bare-earth DEMs, canopy height models, and hillshades without needing to process raw lidar yourself.
Best for: High-resolution terrain, lidar analysis, geomorphology, coastal and fluvial studies.
9. Global Land Cover (ESA CCI Land Cover)
Source: esa-landcover-cci.org / Copernicus Climate Change Service
Format: NetCDF, GeoTIFF
Coverage: Global
The European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover product maps land surface into 22 classes at 300-meter resolution for every year from 1992 to the present, providing a unique time series for analysing land use change over three decades. Classes include cropland, forest types, shrubland, urban areas, water bodies, wetlands, and snow/ice.
A finer 100-meter global land cover map for 2015, 2019, and subsequent years is also available through the Copernicus Global Land Service. Both products are free to download and use with attribution.
Best for: Land use change analysis, carbon accounting, ecosystem monitoring, global modelling inputs.
10. World Resources Institute (WRI) Resource Watch / Global Forest Watch
Source: resourcewatch.org / globalforestwatch.org
Format: Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoTIFF
Coverage: Global
Global Forest Watch, maintained by the World Resources Institute, provides near-real-time data on forest cover change, deforestation alerts, fire activity, and land use across tropical and temperate forest biomes. The Hansen Global Forest Change dataset, updated annually, tracks tree cover gain and loss at 30-meter resolution from 2000 onwards.
Resource Watch more broadly hosts over 300 datasets related to climate, biodiversity, food, water, and cities, all accessible through an API or direct download. Many datasets are updated daily or weekly, making the platform useful for monitoring and early warning applications.
Best for: Deforestation monitoring, biodiversity analysis, climate risk, environmental policy.
Getting Started
All ten of these datasets work with free, open-source GIS software. QGIS is the most accessible desktop application for exploring and visualising spatial data, while Python users will find GeoPandas, Rasterio, and Shapely indispensable for scripted workflows. For cloud-native analysis of large rasters, Google Earth Engine provides free access to many of these datasets without requiring any downloads at all.
A few practical tips before you begin: always check the coordinate reference system of a dataset before combining it with other layers, verify the license for your intended use case, and check when the data was last updated. Spatial data can become stale quickly in dynamic environments, and currency matters as much as accuracy.
The free GIS data ecosystem is richer than it has ever been. The ten sources listed here represent only a starting point. Government open data portals, academic data repositories, and community-driven projects continue to expand what is freely available, and the tools to work with that data are more powerful and accessible than at any previous point in the field’s history.