A PMTile is basically a single giant file that can sit on a CDN somewhere, and the client can ask for a certain part of that file using the byte range header.

A PMTile is basically a single giant file that can sit on a CDN somewhere, and the client can ask for a certain part of that file using the byte range header. It eliminates having to either have a server that is serving tiles, or paying through the nose for IO if serving static files (uploading literally millions of tiles costs a lot, and not just because of their size). If you want to embed a map file in your app, you can already use MBTiles for that. A MBTile is conceptually like a PMTile, in a way, but it's a zip file full of the tiles with a SQLite database. MapBox/MapLibre already supports local MBTiles. You can serve them online, but of course you need something taking in the x, y z coordinates and serving back the tiles. Most of/the entire value prospect of PMTiles is you can dump a single multi GB files on a CDN somewhere, and clients can just request a little slice of it. No servers or any logic required (besides a CDN that supports byte-range headers). I am hoping that MapLibre native will one day will support sources that are PMTiles. `source: pmtile://my.cdn.com/bigOleFile.pmtile` and then it just works as if pointing at a traditional slippy tile source.