Contents
What is an isochrone?
An isochrone map visualises the areas reachable from a given point within a certain time, using various transport modes such as walking, driving, cycling, and public transit.
Unlike distance-based radius maps, isochrones consider real-world routes and transport networks, offering a far more accurate representation of proximity and location accessibility.
Several providers offer isochrone or isoline APIs: Mapbox, TravelTime, HERE, and TomTom among them. But they differ significantly in capabilities, use cases, and pricing.
This article focuses on comparing two popular options: Mapbox Isochrone API and TravelTime Isochrone API.
Mapbox vs. TravelTime: Overview
Both Mapbox and TravelTime are powerful geospatial tools, but they are designed for different purposes.
Mapbox strengths lie in basemaps, robust mobile SDKs, and tools for visual storytelling — ideal for apps, dashboards, and location-based experiences where appearance and interactivity matter most.
However, when it comes to real-world movement and transport insight, Mapbox falls short. The APIs, including Mapbox Isochrone API, are focused on driving and walking, and lack built-in support for public transport or multimodal journeys.
Compared to TravelTime Isochrone API, Mapbox also has a lower maximum time limit, more rigorous usage limits, and a pricing model that does not work at scale. TravelTime is purpose built for true multi-modal journey calculations for search and match, spatial analysis, and routing use cases.
| Mapbox | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Usage limits | Max. matrix size | 10 x 100,000 | 25 x 25 |
| Performance | Calculate 100,000 elements in 120 milliseconds, with no rate limit | 60 requests per minute | |
| Commercial model | Pricing | One fixed custom price for unlimited API requests | $2 per 1,000 isochrones (volume discounts) |
| Support | Included in all licences | Minimum $6,000 / year | |
| Caching Restrictions | - | ||
| Response details | Travel times | ||
| Distances | |||
| Driving | |||
| Walking | |||
| Transport mode | Cycling | ||
| Public Transport | - | ||
| HGV | - | - | |
| Multi-modal | - | ||
| Time settings | Live Traffic | - | |
| Time of day | |||
| Integrations | Plugins | ElasticSearch, Solr, Snowflake, ESRI, Alteryx, QGIS | Unknown |
Isochrone Transport Models
The Mapbox Isochrone API supports driving, walking, and cycling modes of transport. TravelTime Isochrone API supports all these modes as well as public transit, including models for bus, train, metro, and ferry routes.
Why does this difference matter?
Public transport data is essential in cities, where many people depend on buses, trains, and metros. Relying solely on driving and walking omits a huge part of real-world mobility – and therefore limits the applicability of Mapbox isochrones.
Commercial real estate organisation Knight Frank use TravelTime isochrones to deliver catchment areas to their customers.
Knight Frank’s, Head of Geospatial, Cameron McDonald says: “The vast majority of customers now want to define their area of interest using travel times.” Historically, they used other tools but found they “lack the underlying public transport data which is critical for us to provide meaningful advice across the board.”
Moreover, the TravelTime API supports “green” transport analysis, helping businesses factor in sustainability goals—something Mapbox cannot offer when public transport is excluded.
Comparing the Maximum Travel Times
Why are time limits on isochrones important?
In logistics, urban planning, retail, and real estate, people often travel more than an hour or need to understand a more expansive time catchment area. TravelTime's extended timeframes accommodate use cases like:
- Large-scale national or regional delivery planning
- Workforce scheduling
- Multi-zone market and audience catchments
- Long-distance commuting
- Commercial real estate analysis
Limiting analysis to one hour, as Mapbox does, can leave out key data and compromise decision-making for customers and their end-users.
Mapbox vs. TravelTime Isochrone Granularity
Both APIs offer adjustable detail levels. But TravelTime provides more control, supports shape intersections and advanced spatial formats like H3 and GeoHash.
Below, we show how the default options differ significantly.
Mapbox shows a broad area based on where you can travel through within a set time—regardless of whether you can actually stop there.
It includes highways, bridges, and tunnels, even if they don’t lead to accessible destinations. The result is an overestimated catchment area that doesn’t reflect reality.
TravelTime can be configured to only include areas that are truly reachable i.e. where a journey can actually end.
Unlike Mapbox, it excludes roads and routes where stopping isn’t possible, such as mid-bridge or highway stretches.
This results in more accurate catchment areas that reflect real-world accessibility.
What are the benefits of greater granularity?
A higher level of detail has several benefits for businesses using isochrone APIs.
Reliable analysis when combined with other datasets
Simple isochrones can include inaccessible areas (like lakes or no-road zones), skewing data analysis. TravelTime’s high-detail shapes reduce these errors.
More trustworthy results for end users
An inaccurate polygon that shows a 30-minute catchment over a river or mountain harms credibility. TravelTime prevents these errors with more precise isochrones.
Ease of Use: TravelTime and Mapbox API
Both TravelTime and Mapbox provide intuitive tools for developers, including isochrone playgrounds for testing and SDKs in popular languages like Python, Java, NodeJS, and Ruby. TravelTime also supports R, making it particularly useful for data science teams.
A key distinction lies in the supported output formats. Mapbox offers only GeoJSON, while TravelTime supports multiple formats including JSON, XML, WKT, and KML. This flexibility is ideal for teams working with a wider range of tools—especially in GIS, spatial analytics, or data warehousing environments.
With broader format support and language coverage, TravelTime makes it easier to integrate the Isochrone API into a range of solutions and products.
Commercial Models: PAYG Pricing vs. Fixed
TravelTime and Mapbox take very different approaches when it comes to commercial models, usage limits, and licensing.
TravelTime offers a fixed custom price that includes unlimited API usage, with no rate limits and no caching restrictions.
This is ideal for organisations that require scalability, budget predictability, and freedom to model or store data over time. All licences come with support included and there are no extra costs for use in AI or bulk data processing. We have built the API for enterprise use cases where heavy usage and high-performance are standard.
Mapbox follows a pay-as-you-go model. Customers are charged ~$2 per 1,000 isochrone requests, with volume discounts available. There is a hard rate limit of 300 requests per minute, and users face restrictions around caching, scraping, and automated queries. To access enterprise support, customers must commit to a minimum spend of $6,000 per year. Data true as of Summer 2025.
There are also privacy and licensing implications. TravelTime does not collect or track user data, giving organisations full control over their datasets. Mapbox, however, sends customer data back to its own infrastructure without restriction.
TravelTime or Mapbox? The Choice is Yours
Both Mapbox and TravelTime offer isochrone APIs. There are some obvious similarities between the Mapbox Isochrone API and the TravelTime Isochrone API, but there are also some important differences.
Mapbox Isochrone API is a solid option for simple, short-range travel visualisations. It integrates well with Mapbox’s mapping tools, making it useful for developers who need quick, low-volume isochrones for walking, driving, or cycling. If your needs are light and fit within Mapbox’s constraints, it gets the job done.
For more analytical or large-scale use cases, TravelTime is the more capable choice. It supports longer travel times, includes public transport and multimodal journeys, and is designed for growth. There are no usage limits or caching restrictions, and the pricing is fixed—making it ideal for enterprise environments where consistency and performance matter.
Get started with TravelTime now.
