Shapefile Archives

Download Free Shapefile Maps – Country Boundary Polygon, Rail-Road, Water polyline etc

Download Free Shapefile Maps – Shapefile is one of the most common and extensively use vector file format of GIS (Geographical Information System), developed by ESRI as an open Specification, which consist of collection of files viz .shp, .shx and .dbf extension with same prefix name. You might be hunting to Download free shapefile for completing either your small industrial work for POC or for academic project use or for any NGO work.

Download GIS Data From Here

Here you will find the links of best resources to Download Shapefile for free, either its polygon, polyline and point feature shapefile, covering different subjects like Administrative Area Boundaries, Roads, Railways, population etc across the world. You may also look to download Digital Terrain DEM.

Note: The Data Shapefile Downloaded from provided below link here, may or may not be authentic, accurate or incomplete. To check data correctness and accuracy, you need to research and recheck before using it. Also Shapefiles are downloaded for free from different organization or websites link and should be used according to
their respective terms and conditions, so please read T&C before using it for any purpose.

Download GIS Data From Here

Shapefile download link

Download GIS Data of other states of the USA

If you are looking for any shapefile of country which is not listed above please comment below so that we can search in our pitara of shapefile. If we found we can upload it on the same.

Download Free Shapefile Maps – Country Boundary Polygon, Rail-Road, Water polyline etc

1.) Diva GIS –

Website is developed by Robert Hijmans, which provides free Shapefile to download, covering around 244 countries. You can directly select the country and category of shapefile and press on OK button to start download. Subject Category option you will find here are Administrative Areas (Boundaries), Inland Water, Roads, RailRoads, Elevation, Land cover, population, Climate and Gazetteer.

2.) GADM :

GADM is a spatial database of Global Administrative Areas, which covers all countries data defining boundaries such as provinces, taluk, departments, counties, krong etc. GADM listed around 253 countries currently, the different files formats are available along with shapefile such as Esri File Geodatabase, Geopackage(Spatial Lite), R(Spatial Polygon Dataframes), Google Earth .kmz and ESRI personal geodatabase. The coordinate reference system of each file is in longitude/latitude and the datum is WGS84.

3.) Natural Earth Data:

“Natural Earth is a public Domain Map data-set available at at 1:10m(Large scale data), 1:50m(medium scale data), and 1:110 million scales (Small Scale data).” Cultural, physical and raster category data can be downloaded from each scale. Data can be downloaded as shapefile (shp) or GeoDB or as SQLite. Natural Earth is maintained by Nathaneiel V. KELSO and Tom Patterson. Here is the screenshot of shapefile from QGIS (Quantum GIS) tool of 1:10m all shapefile layers uploaded at once.

QGIS View – Download Free Shapefile Maps

4.) Geofabrik:

Geofabrik provides the current data from the Openstreetmap database, which is available either for free as well as premium shapefiles. Data can be downloaded as .osm and .shp.zip file. Select the continent from the link provided for which you need to download the data. Further you can either select the country for filtering out more and hit the .shp.zip link to download the data.

5.) Open Street Map data:

This service is created by Jochen Topf and Christoph Hormann. Following data sets and its subcategories shapefiles can be downloaded from this website.
a.) Coastline Data processing: It covers land polygons of the world area i.e continents and islands, Water polygon i.e polygon for ocean, seas and other water bodies and coastlines as line strings.
b.) Generalized data sets: This section provides you to download Generalized coastline polygon shapefiles.
c.) Antarctic icesheet: Antarctic icesheet polygons and icesheet outlines can be obtained from here.

6.) Gis-Lab info:

World data shapefile can be downloaded from GIS lab. This global data are separated into 4 parts i.e Eur, Noa, Soa and Sas Zones, which you can see the image provided below. This data shapefile is in zipped with 7z compressor and all data are in Latitude / Longitude and WGS84 coordinate system.

Select different zone to Download Free Shapefile Maps

7.) MapCruzin:

While the website does not look user friendly, you need to hunt over different country shapefiles at different area. Both free as well as paid Shapefile can be obtained and downloaded given.

8.) Sedac data:

SocioEconomic Data and Applications Center provides data as zipfile of ESRI File geodatabases or shapefiles, and have decimal degree geographic coordinates system with datum WGS84 (world Geodetic System spheroid of 1984). Continent based regional data is available as shown below. Before downloading the data, you need to register and sign in to their system.

Continent Based data – Download Free Shapefile

9.) Marine Regions:

If you are working on Sea or marine related subject, this website may help you to get the direct data to link to the relevant website from which you can get the shapefile maps data.

It might be possible that the data which you might have downloaded from website provided here, can be of different format which was not required. For this, you can refer to following articles where you can convert different GIS data format to any of it.

Convert KML to shapefile

Convert Shapefile to KML

Convert Shapefile to GeoJSON

Convert GeoJSON to topojson

Merging two or more than two Shapefile

You may also find these links which makes you to download free shapefile map for particular region:

For United States – US census Data website.
For European Countries – Euro Stat Data website.

Is the above provided links are not fulfilling your need. Than the best option you can opt for is to create your own shapefile with the help of QGIS and openstreetmap. You can easily download the data from their and then edit it make it more clear according to your requirement. If you are new to QGIS then let me provide you some tutorial link which helps you to digitize the OSM data and create shapefile.

For what purpose you need to download shapefiles? Which project you are working on? Which website you to get the map data? Do share your valuable thoughts by commenting below. I hope that the above list have definitely helped you in finding the right website to get free shapefile download, while their might be possibilities that I have not listed some of the website which should be present in the list. Please help us by providing those links by commenting below.

Convert Shapefile to kml by QGIS

Convert Shapefile to kml by QGIS. Shapefile is ESRI based Vector file, While KML or Keyhole Markup Language is file which models and stores geographic features for display in Google Earth or Google maps. Many times you may require to convert the required shapefile to KML file, so that you can deploy the same over Google Earth for some reason. QGIS (Quantum GIS) is an open source GIS (Geographic Information System) tool, which let you upload the Shapefile and convert the same to KML file. Similarly ogr2ogr is also an open source tool, which let you to convert between GIS data formats. Look over shp to kml convert using ogr2ogr tool which can be marked as an alternative to this article. You can also see to convert Kml to Shapefile and also Shapefile to GeoJSON in QGIS.

You can also try Online conversion instead of QGIS MAPOG Online converter tool

You can also go through other tutorial in QGIS.

Free SHP to KML conversion using GIS Converter Tool in one click.

Here are the steps to convert shapefile to kml:

Convert Shapefile to kml in QGIS

Convert Shapefile to kml in QGIS:

1.) Open up the installed QGIS.
2.) In the menu bar, select Layer and press Add Vector Layer. Now select the source type in the pop up window opened as File and browse the source Shapefile(Note:Your shapefile .shp, .dbf and .shx file should be in same folder). Press open.

Select the coordinate reference type system if coordinate reference window appears and press ok.

3.) Right click on the name of Shapefile layer Appearing in the Left upper side and select save as:
or
You can select layer from the menu, and click on save as. (Image below provide demonstrate both the options with the indicator displayed)

4.) In the Save vector layer as window, Select the format from the drop down box as Keyhole Markup Language(KML) and browse the folder in which you want to save the KML file . Name it and Press OK.

Your KML file will be Exported in the directed folder. You can Verify the generated KML file for its validity by uploading the generated KML file to QGIS or uploading KML file in Google map. You may soon find the tool and the coding for the same on this site.

You may check in converting Geojson to Topojson and Shapefile to TopoJSON file. Hope this may help you in converting Shapefile to KML file easily. If you still find problem in converting the file, do let me know by commenting below.

Introduction of QGIS 3.2.1

Convert KML to Shapefile in QGIS

Convert KML to Shapefile in QGIS. KML or Keyhole markup language file which store and models geographic features for displaying in Google earth or Google maps, which is not common in use for Map makers and GIS programmers. ESRI made a standard Vector file i.e Shapefile which is most commonly adopted in the field of GIS (Geographic Information System), and this made me to convert KML to shapefile, created for learning purpose from Google map. QGIS (Qunatum GIS) is an open source GIS tool, which provide you a function to convert the KML file to Shapefile, and Vice versa i.e Shapefile to kml file.

You might be looking for converting KML to shapefile when you get the data from third party or from website which download free GIS map data but in different formats which can also be converted to.

If you still don’t prefer using QGIS or GDAL utility to convert the file from kml to shp, then you should also look for KML to Shapefile Conversion using Online Tool.

You might be interested in seeing QGIS tutorials.

Instead of QGIS you can also try Online Converter tool here MAPOG Online converter tool

Convert KML to Shapefile in QGIS:

1.) Open up the installed QGIS.
2.) Select Layer in the menu bar and press Add Vector Layer or select the shortcut icon. Browse the KML file, in the Source DataSet type, in the pop up window opened.(While browsing, select either all files or Key Hole Markup language in file type). And press Open.

Select the coordinate reference type system if coordinate reference window pop ups and press ok.

3.) In the Layer file appearing in the left upper side, right click on it, and select save as:

you can either select layer from the menu and click on save as.

4.) In the Save vector layer as window, Select the format from the drop down box as ESRI Shapefile(OGR) and browse the folder in which you want to save the shapefile. Name it and Press OK.

Try our tool for conversion: MAPOG Online converter tool

Your Shapefile i.e .shp, .shx and .dbf file will be created in the directed folder. Upload your KML file in your map browser tool, or try our tool, to verify whether the tool preserves all attributes and elements or not. You may also see how to merge two shapefile in QGIS. Or if you are looking to convert that shapefile to kml to Topojson then you can look for GeoJSON to Topojson and Shapefile to GeoJSON and shapefile to TopoJSON. Do comment below if you are getting any problem in converting the file.

QGIS 3.2.1 for Beginners