folium

Folium is a Python library that lets you create interactive maps. You work with your data in Python using whatever tools you normally use, and then folium turns that data into a map you can view in a web browser, embed in a web page, or display inside a Jupyter notebook. The maps are powered by Leaflet.js, a well-established JavaScript mapping library, but you do not need to write any JavaScript yourself.

The typical use case is someone who has location data in Python, perhaps a list of coordinates, geographic regions, or data tied to places on a map, and wants to visualize it without switching to a separate mapping tool. You write Python code to load and process the data, then call folium to render it as a zoomable, clickable map.

Installation is a single pip or conda command. The README is brief and points to the full documentation on a separate website for examples and reference. An interactive demo is available via Binder, a service that runs the example notebooks in a browser without any local installation.

Several third-party packages and plugins extend what folium can do. These include a connector for running folium inside Streamlit apps, a layer for fast rendering of large geographic datasets using the browser's graphics hardware, a geocoder plugin, and a tile layer variant with different zoom behavior. The README lists these with links but does not describe them in detail.

Folium is open source and accepts contributions. The project uses GitHub for issue tracking and pull requests.