Comparison of GIS vector file formats

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of vector GIS file formats. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

	Design Authority	Software license
GML	Open Geospatial Consortium	?

• Geography Markup Language (GML) - XML based open standard (by OpenGIS) for GIS data exchange
• AutoCAD DXF - Contour elevation plots in AutoCAD DXF format
• Shapefile - ESRI's open, hybrid vector data format using SHP, SHX and DBF files
• Simple Features - Open Geospatial Consortium specification for vector data
• MapInfo TAB format - MapInfo's vector data format using TAB, DAT, ID and MAP files
• National Transfer Format (NTF) - National Transfer Format (mostly used by the UK Ordnance Survey)
• TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
• Cartesian coordinate system (XYZ) - Simple point cloud
• Vector Product Format - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s format of vectored data for large geographic databases.
• GeoMedia - Intergraph's Microsoft Access based format for spatial vector storage.
• ISFC - Intergraph's MicroStation based CAD solution attaching vector elements to a relational Microsoft Access database
• Personal Geodatabase - ESRI's closed, integrated vector data storage strategy using Microsoft's Access MDB format
• File Geodatabase - ESRI's geodatabase format, stored as folders in a file system.
• Coverage - ESRI's closed, hybrid vector data storage strategy. Legacy ArcGIS Workstation / ArcInfo format with reduced support in ArcGIS Desktop lineup
• Spatial Data File - Autodesk's high-performance geodatabase format, native to MapGuide
• GeoJSON - a lightweight format based on JSON, used by many open source GIS packages