Field data collection is at the heart of countless GIS workflows, from environmental surveys to infrastructure inspections to land management. Each scenario brings its own set of challenges: working in areas with no connectivity, coordinating edits across a distributed team, onboarding field staff or managing data formats across different systems. What works for one organisation may not work for another, and finding the right tool often means understanding your own specific requirements first.
ArcGIS Field Maps is a widely recognised option, but the mobile GIS market has grown considerably, and there are alternatives that may align more closely with your workflows, technical stack and team. Here is what the landscape looks like.
Mergin Maps
Mergin Maps is an offline first, open source and QGIS native field data collection tool built around a simple idea: your field team should be able to collect data without needing GIS training. A GIS person on your team designs projects and forms in QGIS Desktop, syncs them via Mergin Maps plugin, and the field team opens the mobile app and starts working straight away. The interface is clean and intuitive, with no learning curve for the people actually out in the field, and it works for Android, iOS, Windows and macOS.
Because the mobile app uses the QGIS rendering engine, symbology, layer themes and form configurations look identical on phone and desktop. What you see in QGIS is what your field workers see on their device.
The offline first architecture is central to how Mergin Maps works, not an add on. The app functions fully with no signal at all, supporting offline basemaps, full attribute editing, photo capture and GPS tracking. Its sync technology sends only the changes rather than entire datasets, bringing conflict resolution and bandwidth efficiency. When connectivity returns, everything syncs seamlessly, with a full version history and conflict management built in.
Contributor licences are floating, meaning they can be reassigned between team members at any time, while reader accounts are free, unlimited and do not count toward your licence total. The platform offers free plans for academic institutions and NGOs. For organisations that prefer to self host, there's a fully open source Community Edition, alongside an Enterprise Edition for teams that need extra features and dedicated support. Data exports to most common formats, and external Bluetooth GNSS receivers are supported for high accuracy positioning.
QField and QFieldCloud
QField is another open source QGIS based mobile app. It aims to replicate more of the QGIS desktop environment on a mobile device, giving experienced GIS users access to features like a built-in processing toolbox, geofencing, background GPS tracking and external GNSS receivers. It runs on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux.
QFieldCloud provides the sync and collaboration layer, offering online and offline editing modes. The interface is more similar to that of QGIS, which gives flexibility to users familiar with the software but can take more time for field workers less experienced with GIS.
Survey123 for ArcGIS
Survey123 is Esri's form-first field app. You build smart forms either in a web designer or in Survey123 Connect using the XLSForm standard and the app runs on iOS, Android and Windows with offline support once you've packaged a basemap with the survey.
It sits inside the ArcGIS ecosystem, so you'll need an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise account to publish surveys and store responses. Submissions land in hosted feature layers in your ArcGIS organisation, ready to review on the Survey123 website or used in other ArcGIS apps.
Fulcrum
Fulcrum is a proprietary platform built around forms and field operations, with a drag-and-drop builder that lets you create mobile forms without writing any code. The app runs on iOS and Android with offline support, and you can pair it with an external Bluetooth GPS for better accuracy than your device gives you on its own.
As an Esri Silver Partner, Fulcrum integrates with ArcGIS and can display Feature Service Layers directly in the app, with exports in CSV, Excel, GeoJSON and Shapefile. It's aimed at inspections, asset management and wider field operations and pricing is subscription-based.
KoboToolbox
KoboToolbox is a free and open source platform with deep roots in humanitarian, development and research work, and it's been a choice for teams collecting data in tough environments for years. Surveys are built using the XLSForm standard and ODK XForms, so forms can move between Kobo and other ODK-based tools without much fuss.
The mobile app, KoboCollect, runs on Android and works fully offline with no caps on forms, questions, photos or submissions. Kobo is hosted by a nonprofit, which means free accounts for nonprofit users and paid plans for everyone else, and you can also self-host using kobo-docker.
One thing worth knowing: Kobo is form-centric rather than GIS-native, so spatial work is handled through geopoint, geotrace and geoshape question types rather than a full mapping environment.
Choosing what's right for you
Field data collection looks different for every team. Some need tight QGIS integration, others want everything open source and self-hosted on their own infrastructure. For some, working offline in remote sites is the deal breaker. For others it's concurrent editing, so a whole team can be out collecting at once without overwriting each other. The priorities stack up differently for everyone.
We built Mergin Maps to handle all of that, but in a way where the tool itself shouldn't be your focus. The survey should be. Simple to set up and fit to your workflow, easy for non-technical teammates to pick up, covering all the possibilities your survey might need and quiet enough to stay out of your way once you're in the field. That's the philosophy.
If it sounds like the kind of tool you'd like in your hand on a wet Tuesday morning, our 14-day trial is free and our team is happy to help you get started. Our Academic plan is free for students and educators and the Non-Profit plan covers organisations with annual income under €30,000.