What you can do with your imagery

Most people never read the terms attached to a map. It rarely matters — right up until the afternoon you want to print the thing at four feet wide for a lobby, trace it into CAD for a job you are billing, load it on a kiosk that will never see a network, or train a model on it to count what is out there.

That afternoon, the difference between imagery you own and imagery you rent stops being a technicality.

What lands in your hands

Your engagement is packaged as files, not as a login. Depending on what your scope includes, that is:

• Full-resolution aerial map — GeoTIFF (COG), GeoTIFF. The whole property as one sharp, flat, correctly-placed image at 1–3 cm per pixel. Drops straight into GIS, opens in QGIS or ArcGIS, and prints at wall size without going soft.
• Point cloud — COPC LAZ, LAZ, LAS, PLY. Millions of measured points — and, on LiDAR scans, the bare ground under tree cover. Terrain, drainage and volumes — the file your civil engineer actually asks for.
• Photoreal 3D model — GLB, OBJ. The textured model of the property you spin and fly around in the viewer. Open it in Blender, a game engine or a design package, or hand it to a contractor as-is.
• CAD & GIS vectors — DXF, SHP, GeoJSON. Contours and mapped features as drawing and GIS layers, not pictures of layers. Open in AutoCAD or Civil 3D and start drawing on top of real ground.
• Measurement tables — CSV (Acreage Table). The figures behind a mapped layer as a spreadsheet, one row per feature, with the units named in the file. Sort or filter it, or hand it to a contractor who wants the numbers rather than the map.
• Google Earth overlays — KMZ, KML. Your map and layers packaged for Google Earth. The one format everybody on a project already knows how to open.
• Tile archive — ZIP. The streaming tiles behind the online viewer, packaged as files. Host the map yourself, or load it on a kiosk that will never see a network.
• Reports — PDF. The written record for the flight — what was captured, when, and how it checks out. Attach it to a permit packet, a bank submission or a board pack.

They are the full-resolution outputs, downloaded from your dashboard, sitting on your own drive.

What you're allowed to do with them

• You own what we deliver. Once the project is paid in full, the maps, models, point clouds and exports are assigned to you — not licensed to you, not rented.
• Use it however your business needs. Copy it, change it, hand it to your engineer, build something new on top of it. There is no permitted-use list to check first.
• Print as many as you want. Put it in the offering memorandum, the permit packet, the board deck and a four-foot print for the lobby. Nobody is counting exports.
• Digitize it for commercial work. Trace it into CAD or GIS and bill the work. What your engineer draws on top of your imagery is yours as well.
• Use it to improve your other data. Align older imagery to it, colour-match against it, use it as the reference the next flight is checked against.
• Train models on it. Count cattle, trees, pallets or parking spaces with whatever model you like. They are your pixels to learn from.
• Take it offline and hand it out. Load it on a kiosk, a laptop or an SD card and open it in a canyon with no signal. Nothing has to phone home, and nothing expires.

Each of those follows from the Data & Intellectual-Property License you sign with us — ownership of the deliverables is assigned to you on full payment, and your use of them is not restricted to a permitted-use list.

The same questions, asked of rented map imagery

Here is the honest comparison, with the vendor's own published terms quoted word for word so you can check every line. We have not tested anything against their service — this is all read from documents anybody can open.

Can I put it in a printed report?

Not by default. Print use is prohibited except through named carve-outs, and printed media are defined to include PDF, JPG and PNG — so a client report counts. Studio allows up to 100 high resolution static digital copies for the lifetime of the account; beyond that, print rights must be bought in an active Order, and even purchased print rights stay limited to Mapbox Streets v8 or later (plus Japan map data for educational or private use).

"Customer may use Studio to make up to an aggregate total of 100 high resolution static digital copies of Licensed Map Content during the lifetime of Customer's account." — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.7 Print or Video Use, §1.7.1–§1.7.4

With your own imagery: Print it. Frame it. Put it in the offering memorandum, the permit packet and the bank submission. There is no export counter.

Can I trace it into CAD or GIS for commercial work?

Tracing or otherwise deriving content is prohibited, with one narrow exception: satellite-only maps may be traced into derivative vector datasets for non-commercial purposes or for OpenStreetMap. Commercial digitizing is not in the exception.

"Customer may use Studio or third-party software to trace Mapbox Maps solely comprised of satellite imagery to produce derivative vector datasets (i) for non-commercial purposes or (ii) for OpenStreetMap." — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.6 No Tracing, Deriving, or Extracting

With your own imagery: Digitize away. DXF for CAD, Shapefile and GeoJSON for GIS, KMZ for any map app — all part of the delivery, and what your engineer draws on top belongs to you.

Can I use it to check or improve my own imagery?

No. One unconditional sentence, with no exception attached. For anyone producing their own imagery, that rules out using it as an alignment, color or sanity-check reference.

"Customer shall not use Mapbox's satellite and/or aerial imagery to improve the accuracy of or otherwise enhance any imagery." — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §2.8.2 Mapping APIs — satellite and aerial imagery

With your own imagery: It is your imagery. Align to it, color-match against it, use it as the reference for the next flight.

Can I train a model on it?

No, with one carve-out that does not help you here: the ban covers using the service offerings to train, operate or improve machine-learning or AI, except for Mapbox Traffic Data and Movement Data where an active Order expressly permits it. Imagery is not in the exception.

"use the Service Offerings to train, operate or improve machine-learning or artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (except with respect to Mapbox Traffic Data and Mapbox Movement Data only if expressly permitted under an active Order)" — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.5 No Derived Works, Reverse Engineering, or Competitive Uses — clause (ii)

With your own imagery: Train on it. Count your cattle, your trees, your pallets, your parking spaces — on your own pixels, with whatever model you like.

Can I take it offline, into a field with no signal?

Downloading, caching or storing map content is prohibited by default. The narrow exception is a cache on an end user's own device, populated directly from the APIs, kept no longer than thirty days.

"Customer may cache that Licensed Map Content on an End User's device but caching is limited to thirty (30) days on the same device making the Mapping API request." — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.9(v) default restrictions, §2.8.1 thirty-day end-user cache

With your own imagery: Download the whole thing. GeoTIFF, LAZ, GLB, PDF — the files live on your drive, and they still open on the tailgate with no signal at all.

What actually happens if I stop paying?

The imagery is licensed, not sold — and since storing a copy was never permitted beyond a thirty-day cache on an end user's own device, there is nothing left over when the account ends.

"Licensed Map Content does not include Customer Uploads or Third-Party Data." — Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §3.32 Licensed Map Content excludes Customer Uploads

With your own imagery: Nothing happens to your data. It was a delivery, not a rental — and the same terms say it plainly for uploads. What we fly for you was never theirs to restrict.

Isn't there free public imagery I can just use?

Yes, and we will tell you when it is enough. Federal NAIP imagery over Texas is public domain and free to download, and the service describes itself as primarily 0.6 meter. For a wide-area context map it is genuinely the right tool.

"The USGS NAIP Imagery service is a mosaic primarily of 0.6 meter resolution 4-band imagery presented in natural color." — USGS / USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) — ImageServer service description

With your own imagery: Where it stops being enough is anything you have to measure, plan or price — a stockpile volume, a pad elevation, a drainage line, how much fall a field has.

The three guarantees

NO COMPETITORS ON YOUR MAP

Your map shows your property, your assets and your branding. Nothing else — no advertised businesses, no third-party listings, no labels for the place next door.

We can promise it because every layer ON your map is one we made for you — your own capture, your named places, your routes. Where the frame runs past your own ground, what fills it is plain satellite imagery from a third party, credited on the map and carrying no labels, listings or business pins of its own. Printed pages and exported figures go further still: those are composited from your capture alone.

FLAT PRICING, NO PER-VIEW BILLING EVER

You pay for the flight and for hosting, at a price agreed up front. You are never billed by the map load, so a busy season on your website costs exactly what a quiet one does.

Sharing your map widely is the point of having one. A bill that grows every time a guest opens it would be a bill for succeeding, so we do not write one.

OFFLINE AND BUNDLED USE PERMITTED

Download your files and put them wherever you need them — a visitor-centre kiosk, a laptop in a truck, an SD card in a ranger's pocket. They open with no signal and nothing expires.

You own the deliverables outright once the project is paid, so preloading them, bundling them into your own app and handing them to your own people are all just uses of your own property.

Sources

• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.7 Print or Video Use, §1.7.1–§1.7.4 — read 2026-08-06
• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.6 No Tracing, Deriving, or Extracting — read 2026-08-06
• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.5 No Derived Works, Reverse Engineering, or Competitive Uses — clause (ii) — read 2026-08-06
• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §2.8.2 Mapping APIs — satellite and aerial imagery — read 2026-08-06
• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §1.9(v) default restrictions, §2.8.1 thirty-day end-user cache — read 2026-08-06
• Mapbox Product Terms (July 21, 2026) — §3.32 Licensed Map Content excludes Customer Uploads — read 2026-08-06
• USGS / USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) — ImageServer service description — read 2026-08-06

We keep the date we read each page, because terms change and a claim with no date on it is not checkable.

This data is not a legal survey. Embry Solutions LLC does not perform land surveys. For boundary, subdivision, or title surveys, please consult a licensed Texas surveyor.