People open Google Earth for a handful of reasons. They look at a house or a holiday spot from above, check how a place changed over the years, study mountains before a hike, or fly around a city in 3D. Some build projects with pins and shapes for school or work.
No single free tool does all of that as well as Google. Fresh satellite imagery is the one area where you can do better. The EU publishes new Sentinel images every few days and NASA publishes global views every day, all for free. For everything else, pick the tool that matches the job.
Leaving also gets your projects out of Google’s hands. Google Earth projects live in your Google Drive and are tied to your Google Account.
Quick Comparison
| Alternative | Best for | Price (Oct 2026) | Privacy | Based in | Open source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copernicus Browser | Recent satellite images and time-lapses | Free, with a free account | Public EU service | EU | Partly |
| NASA Worldview | Daily global imagery, fires and storms | Free | No account to browse | USA (NASA) | Yes |
| OsmAnd | Offline maps and 3D terrain on your phone | Free with limits; Pro about €5.99/month or €39.99/year | Works offline | OsmAnd B.V. | Yes |
| Apple Maps | 3D cities on iPhone and Mac | Free | No Google account involved | USA | No |
| Esri Wayback | Sharp close-ups and older images back to 2014 | Free to browse | Sign in only to save maps | USA (Esri) | No |
| Marble | A desktop globe on Linux | Free | Runs on your computer | KDE community | Yes (LGPL) |
Which One Should You Pick?
- To see what a place looks like right now, or how a field, coast or forest has changed, use Copernicus Browser.
- To follow wildfires, storms, floods or smoke, use NASA Worldview.
- To study mountains and trails in 3D before a hike, use OsmAnd.
- To fly around a city in 3D, use Apple Maps on iPhone, iPad or Mac.
- To see your street up close, or how it looked in earlier years, use Esri Wayback. In France, use cartes.gouv.fr.
- To spin a globe on your Linux desktop, use Marble.
The Alternatives, One by One
Copernicus Browser
Copernicus Browser is the web viewer of the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, the EU’s home for data from its Sentinel satellites. You get Sentinel-1 radar, Sentinel-2 color and infrared images, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P air quality data and elevation models. Tools let you compare two dates side by side, take measurements, view terrain in 3D, save pins, and export time-lapses as GIF or MP4.
Sentinel-2 has a 5-day revisit time, so you can often find a cloud-free image from the past week or two. That makes it better than Google Earth for checking a flood, a fire scar or a construction site. The interface is available in several languages.
- Pick it because it’s free, public, European and current.
- Watch for these deal-breakers. Sentinel-2 pixels are 10 meters across, so a house is a dot or two and cars don’t show at all. Clouds hide many dates. It’s a scientific tool, so give it ten minutes to learn, and use a computer.
- It costs nothing. The official documentation says you need a free account to use it.
NASA Worldview
Worldview shows more than 1,200 satellite data products from NASA, and many appear within three hours of a satellite pass. Geostationary imagery comes in ten-minute steps for the past 90 days. You can animate days or hours to watch a hurricane form or a smoke plume cross a continent.
- Pick it because it’s the fastest way to see today’s planet, and its code is open source under the NASA Open Source Agreement.
- The deal-breaker is that the daily global images show whole regions, not streets or buildings.
- It’s free. Browsing needs no account. An Earthdata Login is only needed to download data and use some advanced tools.
OsmAnd
OsmAnd is an open-source map app built on OpenStreetMap. Hikers like it for contour lines, track recording and offline maps. Its 3D Relief view raises the landscape so you can see valleys and ridges in 3D, even offline. On Android, turn it on under Menu → Configure map → Topography → 3D Relief.
- Pick it because it brings Google Earth’s terrain view to a phone app that works without a connection or an account.
- Watch for these deal-breakers. 3D Relief needs OsmAnd Pro, and the free version allows only 7 map downloads. It’s a map with relief shading. You won’t see photos of the ground.
- Prices (Oct 2026) on Android, per OsmAnd’s docs, are about €5.99/month or €39.99/year for Pro. Maps+ is about €69.99 once or €14.99/year and adds unlimited downloads and the topography tools.
- It runs on Android, iPhone and the web.
Apple Maps
On iPhone, iPad and Mac, Apple Maps’ satellite view shows 3D Flyover imagery for many major cities and landmarks. It’s the closest match to Google Earth’s 3D cities. Apple dropped the guided Flyover city tours in iOS 26, but the 3D imagery is still there.
- Pick it because it’s already on your iPhone and needs no Google account.
- The deal-breakers are that it’s Apple only and that 3D only covers the cities Apple has mapped.
- It’s free, and there’s a web version at maps.apple.com.
Esri World Imagery Wayback
Esri, a US mapping company, keeps every release of its World Imagery basemap since February 2014. Esri’s documentation describes that imagery as 1-meter resolution across most of the world, and sharper in the US, parts of Western Europe and many big cities. That’s enough to see individual buildings. Wayback lets you flip between those releases, compare two of them with a swipe tool, or animate them to watch a neighborhood grow. It opens in a browser, and you only sign in if you want to save a map.
- Pick it because it’s the sharpest free imagery here, and the easiest stand-in for Google Earth Pro’s historical imagery.
- The deal-breakers are that it’s a flat 2D view, the history only goes back to 2014, and it’s another US company’s product.
Marble
Marble is KDE’s free virtual globe and world atlas. It shows OpenStreetMap down to street level, historical maps from past centuries, clouds and the sun’s shadow, and real-time satellite tracking. Version 26.08.2 came out on 8 October 2026 under the LGPL.
- Pick it because it’s open source, runs locally and is fun for learning geography.
- The deal-breaker is that current versions are for Linux. The Windows and Mac installers on Marble’s site are much older.
For France, cartes.gouv.fr
The French state launched cartes.gouv.fr on 25 June 2026 as the successor to Géoportail, and old Géoportail links have redirected there since 30 September 2026. It’s free and ad-free, with IGN maps, the land registry and aerial photos. You can lay historical maps, such as the 18th-century Cassini map or a 1950 map, over today’s aerial photos to see what changed. If you searched for “alternative à Google Earth,” this is the French public option.
For Developers, Cesium
Cesium is a 3D globe platform for building your own apps. Its free Community plan is for personal, non-commercial use. Its catalog includes Google’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles, so a Cesium-based app can still be showing you Google data.
How to Switch From Google Earth
First, Export Your Projects and Places
- In Google Earth on the web, open Projects and open a project you want to keep.
- Open the three-dot Show more options menu and choose Export as KML file. You can also use File → Export as KML file or press Ctrl + E.
- Repeat for each project. They’re stored in your Google Drive until you delete them.
If you used Google Earth Pro on a computer, export your saved places from there.
- In the Places panel, right-click My Places (Control-click on a Mac) and choose Save Place As.
- Pick a name and folder, then click Save. Google Earth saves a KMZ file, which contains the KML.
Lines, pins and shapes usually import cleanly elsewhere. Photos, tours and custom styles may not, so keep the KML file as an archive.
Then Import Them Into a Map App
- Copy the KML or KMZ file to your phone.
- In OsmAnd, go to Menu → Settings → Import/export → Import and pick the file. OsmAnd converts KML and KMZ to GPX tracks and points.
- Prefer a simpler app? CoMaps and Organic Maps open KML and KMZ files directly, and the places appear as a bookmark list. Our Google Maps to CoMaps guide walks through it.
Set up Copernicus Browser
- Open browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu on a computer and create a free account.
- Search for a place, choose Sentinel-2, then pick a date with little cloud cover.
- Try the compare and time-lapse tools on a place you know well, such as your town or a favorite beach.
Finally, Clean up Google
After checking your exports, delete the Earth projects you no longer need and uninstall the Google Earth app. Partial is fine here. If you still want Google’s 3D view of a city now and then, open earth.google.com in a private window and don’t sign in.
Your Earth projects sit in Google Drive, so they also matter when you move away from Google Drive. For your everyday map app, see our Google Maps alternatives.