Draw Map
A Draw Map lets you sketch markers, lines, and polygons straight onto an interactive base map — no GIS software required. It's the fastest way to annotate a location, outline a service area, or build a simple custom map from scratch.
It also draws routes for you. Pick Route from the Add menu and click up to 10 stops onto the map — or search for them by address, or route through markers you have already placed — and the path along the real road network appears as you go, with the distance and time of every leg. Drag a pin to adjust a stop, drag the list into a new order or let Mapji find the shortest one, make it a round trip, and steer driving routes away from tolls, highways or ferries. Walking and cycling routes show their climb. The finished route is an editable line carrying its distance and travel time, and you can reopen it later to change the stops.
Every stop lands as its own marker, numbered in order by default, and any stop can be switched to an icon of your choice. Everything you draw is standard GeoJSON, so you can import existing data or export your work to use elsewhere, and each feature can carry its own name, description, and color. Visitors who click a marker, line, or shape see a popup — its name and description by default, or one you design under Settings → Popup: the fields you choose in your order, with prices, dates and units formatted, a photo across the top, a button to your own page, and Directions to a marker.
You can also draw on top of someone else's map. Pick a background layer from the built-in catalog — yesterday's satellite view, hillshade, ocean depth, weather radar, hiking routes — or connect a published WMS, ArcGIS, PMTiles or XYZ tile service, and it renders live beneath your own features: aerial imagery to trace from, a cadastral or zoning layer to align against, a scanned historical sheet to georeference your notes to.
What you can do
- Popups you design: photos, buttons, formats
- Draw polygons and lines
- Multistop routes by address or click
- Satellite, terrain or weather layers underneath — or your own WMS
How to create a draw map
- 1
Create a Draw map
Start a new site and pick the Draw map type.
- 2
Add features
Drop markers, trace lines, and draw polygons with the editing toolbar — or import a GeoJSON, Shapefile, KML, GPX or spreadsheet file.
- 3
Add a route
Choose Add → Route and click the map to place each stop — or type an address, or click one of your own markers. Choose how you travel and the route is drawn along the road network as you go; drag a pin to fine-tune a stop.
- 4
Add a background layer (optional)
Open Layers and pick imagery or a reference layer from the catalog, or paste a WMS, ArcGIS, PMTiles or {z}/{x}/{y} tile service URL of your own.
- 5
Style & describe
Give each feature a name, description, and color — the name and description are what visitors see when they click it.
- 6
Publish
Live at mapji.com/map/your-map straight away — add a free subdomain or connect a custom domain when you want one.
Draw Map FAQ
Can I import existing GeoJSON?
Yes — along with TopoJSON, KML, KMZ, GPX, zipped Shapefiles and spreadsheets. Imported features are added to whatever you have already drawn and every one of them stays editable on the canvas, and you can export your work back out as GeoJSON.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Drawing is entirely point-and-click — Mapji is a no-code map maker.
Can I trace over aerial imagery or an official dataset?
Yes. A Draw map can carry up to 5 background layers — one-click picks from the built-in catalog of public layers, or published map services of your own: WMS, ArcGIS MapServer or ImageServer, a PMTiles archive, or a plain {z}/{x}/{y} tile template. They are fetched live from the publisher rather than imported, so they never count against your feature limit and they stay current, and they always render beneath what you have drawn. Set each layer's opacity to fade it back while you trace.
Can I add a driving route between several places?
Yes. The route tool takes up to 10 stops in order and follows the real road network between them, across 10 travel modes — car, truck, bus, motorcycle, scooter, bicycle, mountain bike, road bike, walking, and hiking. The finished route lands on the map as a normal line feature carrying its distance and travel time, so you can restyle, rename, or delete it like anything else you drew — or reopen it to move, add or reorder its stops.
Can I type an address instead of clicking each stop?
Yes. The stop list has a search box: start typing a street, place, or city and pick a suggestion to add it as a stop. Suggestions are biased toward the area you are currently looking at, so a bare street name resolves near your map rather than on another continent. You can mix the two — search some stops, click others on the map, where each one is named after the street it lands on — and drag the stops into any order.
Can I change how the stops look?
Yes. Each stop is a numbered badge by default, and any stop can be switched to a Maki or Lucide icon with its own color and size — either while you are building the route or afterwards from the marker properties panel. Switching back to the numbered badge restores its original position number.
Step-by-step guides
Draw over live aerial imagery or an official dataset without importing it — and why a service that works in QGIS can still refuse to load on the web.
My Maps is the right answer for a lot of jobs. A guide to the five walls that make people switch, and how to evaluate what to switch to.