Grass
Grass is a free, open-source science and GIS app for Windows, macOS and Linux. GRASS - free and open-source geospatial processing engine. It has 1,177 GitHub stars and is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, and people use it instead of ArcGIS.
- Official
- Linux
- macOS
- Windows
- Science, GIS & engineering
- Actively maintained
About Grass
GRASS, Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, is a powerful computational engine for raster, vector, and geospatial processing. It supports terrain and ecosystem modeling, hydrology, data management, and imagery processing. With a built-in temporal framework and Python API, it enables advanced time series analysis and rapid geospatial programming, optimized for large-scale analysis on various hardware configurations.
Replaces
Commercial software people commonly use Grass instead of.
- ArcGIS
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What is Grass?
Grass is a free, open-source science and GIS app for Windows, macOS and Linux. GRASS - free and open-source geospatial processing engine. It has 1,177 GitHub stars and is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, and people use it instead of ArcGIS.
Is Grass free and open source?
Yes. Grass's source code is public on GitHub under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, which is OSI-approved or FSF-free, so you can use, copy and change it for free.
How do I install Grass?
Download the installer for Windows, macOS and Linux from its GitHub Releases page (latest: 8.5.0) or the project website.
Can Grass replace ArcGIS?
Grass is commonly used as a free alternative to ArcGIS. Features differ, so check that it opens the file formats and covers the workflows you rely on before switching.