For today’s Saga, I’ll be talking about two more FREE GIS data sources that anyone can access. (For last month’s data sources, click here). Trying to find reliable data can take up a large portion of time, but hopefully spreading the word about the sources can help others out. And did I mention these are free data sources?!

1. geoBoundaries

From the geoLab at William & Mary University, this site provides quick and easy access for world administrative boundaries, from single countries to whole world composites. Of course, this is free GIS data with the only requirement to provide a citation when used.

• Available Data: 1,000,000 world administrative boundaries for 200 entities, including UN member states.
• Coverage: The entire world.
• How to Use It: Choose the level of detail needed (single country, world, or simplified world) and search for the product you need. The download is quick and easy, and data comes in several standard file formats (e.g. shapefile and geoJSON). The site also has a comparison to show the differences in detail between geoBoundaries data and other data sources.

• How Easy is it to Use: Using the site is about as easy as it gets. They even provide examples on how to cite the data for various publications and uses, and the download comes with a text file explaining column data. Well done to the folks at the William & Mary geoLab
• Access Link: geoBoundaries

2. Natural Earth

Many GIS professionals already know about Natural Earth data as an amazing free GIS data source, but it’s always worth mentioning.

• Available Data: High-quality vector and raster data for the entire world, including man made infrastructure, administrative boundaries, land area, time zones, bathymetry, detailed topographic relief map data, and much more. Natural Earth data also comes in three different resolution options for maps at different scales.
• Coverage: Data coverage is on a global scale.
• How to Use It: Explore downloadable products based on resolution. Vector data is categorized as “Cultural” (for man made features and infrastructure), “Physical” (for naturally occurring geographic shapes and phenomenon) or “Raster” (for shaded reliefs).
• How Easy is it to Use: Downloads are only a few clicks away from the landing page. Since everything is based on global coverage, there is no need to search for specific region or country, everything is downloaded for the entire planet. File sizes can be large for some raster data (on the order of hundreds of megabytes).
• Access Link: Natural Earth

That’s it for today, I hope you found this review of two great free data sources helpful. Please leave a comment, and share your own favorite data sources I might review in a future post.

Until next time, keep exploring the world around you!

The post Free GIS Data Sources – August, 2026 appeared first on Northman Mapping & GIS, LLC.