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Guide

How to find the XYZ tile URL a map is using

The short answer: find any tile request in the network tab, then replace the three numbers in its path with {z}, {x}, and {y}. That is the template, and it is all QGIS needs.

What you are looking for

A slippy map draws itself out of square images fetched one at a time. Every tile request looks like this:

https://tiles.example.com/basemap/12/4021/2578.png

Those three numbers are always the same three things, in this order:

  • 12 is the zoom level. 0 is the whole world; 19 or so is a building.
  • 4021 is the column, counting east from the left edge of the world.
  • 2578 is the row, counting south from the top.

So the template is:

https://tiles.example.com/basemap/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

That is the whole trick. One request gives you every tile in the set.

Finding one

  1. Open the map and press F12.
  2. Go to the Network tab and click the Img filter, or type .png in the filter box. For vector tiles, filter for .pbf or .mvt.
  3. Reload, then pan the map a little. Tiles will pour in.
  4. Click any one and copy its URL.
  5. Replace the three numbers with {z}, {x}, and {y}.

Sanity-check yourself by looking at two or three requests side by side. The number that stays the same while you pan is the zoom; the two that change are x and y.

The gotchas

TMS row order. Some services count rows from the bottom instead of the top. If your layer appears vertically mirrored, that is why. In QGIS, use {-y} instead of {y}.

Subdomains. You might see a.tiles, b.tiles, and c.tiles in different requests. That is an old trick to work around browser connection limits. QGIS accepts {s} in some contexts, but picking one subdomain and hard-coding it works fine.

API keys. If the URL has a key=, token=, or access_token= on it, that key belongs to whoever built the site, and it is theirs, not yours. It is quite likely restricted to their domain, so it will not work for you anyway, and using it is billing someone else for your tiles. Get your own.

Retina tiles. An @2x in the path means double-resolution tiles.

Adding it to QGIS

  1. In the Browser panel, right-click XYZ Tiles.
  2. Choose New Connection.
  3. Paste the template with the placeholders intact.
  4. Set the maximum zoom to match the service, usually 18 or 19.
  5. Click OK and drag the new entry onto your map.

What you can and cannot do with it

A tile layer is a picture. It is genuinely useful as a backdrop: a custom basemap, an aerial layer, someone's beautifully cartographed topo sheet.

It is not data. You cannot query it, join to it, or measure from it, because there is nothing in it but colour. If the tiles are showing you parcels and you need parcel boundaries, you need the service behind the tiles, not the tiles. Try finding the WMS URL or the ArcGIS REST endpoint on the same site.

Vector tiles are different, but less different than you would hope. A .pbf tile does contain real geometry, so you can add one to QGIS as a Vector Tiles connection and get lines and polygons. But that geometry has been simplified for the zoom level and clipped at each tile edge, and most attributes are gone. Fine to look at, wrong to measure with.

Letting something find it for you

Geo Hound recognises XYZ tiles, vector tiles, and vector tile styles as you browse, alongside the OGC and Esri services. It hands you the template with the placeholders already in place, and formats it for ArcGIS Pro too, which uses {level}, {col}, and {row} instead.

It deliberately ignores the big commercial basemaps. Nobody needs another copy of the Google tile URL, and you would not be allowed to use it anyway.