Google My Maps vs Google Maps: What's the Difference (And When to Use Each)

Google Maps is Google's consumer navigation app with over 2 billion monthly active users, built for real-time directions, traffic, and local search. Google My Maps is a separate custom-map editor launched in April 2007, designed for planning trips and drawing layered maps you share via a link. They share base tiles, but feature sets, limits, and workflows are completely different — and confusing them costs people hours.

Most people stumble into Google My Maps by accident, then discover on day one of their trip that the map doesn't work offline, can't be edited from a phone, and silently capped the import at 2,000 rows. Pick the wrong one and you'll fight the tool the whole way.

Two Different Products, One Name Family

Google Maps is the flagship. As of Q1 2025, it has 2.2 billion monthly active users and roughly 65-67% of global mobile navigation, vs Apple Maps at around 14%. It processes 5 billion location searches per day, covers 220+ countries, lists 200 million businesses. Mobile dominates at 92% of interactions, with 1.6 billion Android installs and 450 million on iOS.

Google My Maps is a niche side product. Launched April 2007, briefly rebranded "Google Maps Engine Lite" in March 2013, then renamed back. On October 15, 2021, Google shut down the standalone Android app — mobile users now open mymaps.google.com in a browser. Google does not publish monthly active user numbers for My Maps.

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Feature Comparison

Feature	Google Maps	Google My Maps
Primary purpose	Navigation and discovery	Custom map creation and sharing
Launched	February 2005	April 2007
Monthly active users	2+ billion (Oct 2024)	Not disclosed
Mobile app	Yes (Android, iOS)	Discontinued Oct 15, 2021
Offline maps	Yes, download areas for offline use	No, requires internet connection
Turn-by-turn navigation	Yes, with live traffic	No, only static directions
Custom markers and icons	Limited (Lists only, one emoji)	Full customization, colors, custom icons
Custom layers	No	Up to 10 layers per map
Import CSV/KML/GPX/XLSX	No	Yes (with 5MB per layer cap)
Maximum locations	Unlimited starred places	2,000 per layer, 10,000 per map
Total points limit	None	50,000 across lines and shapes
Real-time traffic	Yes	No
AI features (Ask Maps)	Yes (Gemini-powered, 2026)	No
Immersive View 3D	Yes, in hundreds of cities	No
Embed on website	Yes, single locations/routes	Yes, full custom maps
Editing on phone	Yes	No (web-only since 2021)
API access	Google Maps Platform (paid)	None for custom maps
Price	Free for end users	Free

When to Use Google Maps

Google Maps is the right tool any time the answer depends on the current state of the world. Turn-by-turn driving directions with live traffic. Finding the nearest pharmacy open at 11pm. Public transit with real schedules. Sharing your live location with a friend for 30 minutes. None of this is possible in My Maps.

The 2026 release cycle leaned harder into this consumer-first identity. Ask Maps, powered by Gemini, accepts natural-language queries like "Where can I find a quiet cafe with Wi-Fi near the Colosseum?" Immersive View now covers hundreds of major cities in photorealistic 3D. Immersive Navigation adds a 3D driving view that renders buildings, overpasses, and terrain as you drive. None of these exist in My Maps.

Offline support is the deciding factor for travel. The main app downloads entire metro areas for navigation without data. My Maps cannot — your custom map disappears the moment you lose connection, which Google My Maps mobile problems covers in detail.

When to Use Google My Maps

Google My Maps is the right tool when you need to draw, organize, and share a custom set of locations that don't exist on the public map. Trip itineraries with day-by-day layers. Wedding maps with venues color-coded. Research maps for academic work. Real estate showings grouped by neighborhood. Hand-drawn service-area boundaries. Anything where you're the author of the data, not a consumer of Google's.

The editor is genuinely good. Add point markers, draw lines and polygons, import CSV, XLSX, KML, GPX, or GeoJSON files, style points by color and custom icon, and organize everything into up to 10 named layers. Collaborators get view, comment, or edit access like a Google Doc. Maps embed via iframe.

For datasets under 2,000 rows that live on desktop and don't need offline access, My Maps is a competent free tool. The friction only appears when you scale up or take it mobile.

The Limits Nobody Mentions Upfront

Google's official documentation states that maps "are created with one layer, but you can have up to 10." The community-confirmed hard caps are stricter than most users assume:

2,000 features per layer (points, lines, or polygons combined)
10 layers per map maximum
10,000 total features per map
50,000 total points across lines and shapes
5MB file size limit per layer on import
2,000 row import cap — Google's docs explicitly say "Do not import files with more than 2,000 rows"

The 2,000-row import cap fails silently. Your spreadsheet uploads, the map opens, everything looks fine — and 800 locations are missing with no error. Full breakdown in Why Google My Maps has a 2,000 location limit.

The 5MB-per-layer cap bites GPX users hard. Multi-day GPS tracks routinely exceed 5MB and need simplification through tools like mapshaper.org or GPX Studio before they'll import.

If you're hitting these caps, keep your data in a real database and visualize elsewhere. NotionToMaps connects a Notion database directly to an interactive map with marker clustering, no per-layer cap, and one-click export to standard formats.

The Mobile Story Is Worse Than Desktop

Google killed the standalone My Maps Android app on October 15, 2021. There has never been an official iOS app. To use My Maps from a phone today, you open a mobile browser to mymaps.google.com — no offline access, no editing, and a UI built for a 24-inch monitor.

You can view a My Maps layer inside the regular Google Maps app on Android, but only one custom map at a time, and the layer panel is buggy. Users report layers silently deselecting on zoom, custom markers competing with Google's default business POIs, and the entire custom map vanishing on app restart.

When Neither One Is the Right Answer

Both products assume your data lives inside Google. That's fine for personal use, but falls apart in three cases:

You exceed 2,000 locations per layer. A coffee chain with 4,500 stores, every listing in a metro area, a citizen-science bird database — any of these hit the cap immediately.

You need portable data. My Maps exports to KML and CSV, but not GPX. If you want your locations in a Garmin device, an AllTrails route, or your own web map, you'll be doing conversion gymnastics. KML vs GPX vs GeoJSON vs CSV covers when each format matters.

The data lives somewhere else already. Tracking locations in a Notion database, Airtable base, or Google Sheet means re-importing into My Maps every time something changes. A database-first approach with automatic visualization fixes this.

NotionToMaps was built for the third case. Connect a Notion database with a Place property, and every location becomes a marker on a shareable map. No 2,000-row cap, marker clustering for large datasets, one-click export to KML, GPX, GeoJSON, or CSV. The database stays the source of truth — the map is just a view. For the underlying property type, see the Notion Place property guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Google My Maps the same as Google Maps?

No. Google Maps is a navigation and discovery app with 2+ billion monthly active users. Google My Maps is a separate custom-map editor launched in April 2007, with no turn-by-turn navigation, no offline access, no real-time traffic, and hard caps of 2,000 features per layer and 10 layers per map. They share base tiles but solve different problems.

Can I use Google My Maps offline?

No. Google My Maps has no official offline mode and requires an active internet connection to load. The standalone My Maps Android app was discontinued on October 15, 2021, leaving only the web app at mymaps.google.com. The standard Google Maps app, by contrast, supports downloading entire areas for offline navigation.

Why can't I edit Google My Maps on my phone?

Because Google discontinued the My Maps Android app on October 15, 2021, and never released an iOS version. The mobile web at mymaps.google.com is technically usable but was built for desktop and lacks proper editing tools. Most users build maps on a laptop and only view them on mobile inside the regular Google Maps app, which surfaces a buggy layer panel — covered in the post on Google My Maps mobile problems.

Which should I use for trip planning?

Use Google My Maps on desktop to build the plan with custom markers, day-by-day layers, and color-coded categories. Then use the main Google Maps app on your phone during the trip for turn-by-turn navigation, live traffic, and offline downloads. Or skip the dual-tool dance entirely and use a Notion database with NotionToMaps so your itinerary, notes, and map all live in one place and export to any format you need.