Free tools for working with LiDAR files

Convert, view and classify LAS, LAZ, COPC and E57 point clouds, or turn them into DEMs and orthophotos — directly in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is installed, and there is no file size limit.

Convert a file Explore this point cloud

No upload
No fixed file size limit
No account
LAS · LAZ · COPC · E57 · PLY · XYZ · GeoTIFF · STL

Convert LAZ to LAS, or LAS to LAZ

Drop a file and the direction is detected from the file itself. The output is byte-for-byte lossless — header, coordinate system and every point record survive the trip.

Drop your LAS or LAZ file here

or choose a file

LAS 1.0–1.4 · multi-gigabyte files welcome

No file to hand? — 150 × 150 m of central Brussels, airborne LiDAR, 2014, 158,098 points (1.31 MB).

No upload. Processing runs in a Web Worker on your device — this app has no server component and no upload endpoint. How it works

Looking for something else? Everything in the toolbox is below.

Everything in the toolbox

Each tool does one job, takes a file directly, and gives you the result on the same page.

Convert

Move your data into the format the next program needs — point clouds without losing a point.

View

Open a file and actually look at it, in 3D, in the browser.

Inspect

Read the header, the coordinate system and the records inside.

LAS & LAZ inspectorRead the header, coordinate system and every record of a LAS or LAZ file — from disk or by URL, without touching the points.

Analyze

Derive something new from the points you already have — labels, terrain, imagery.

Learn LiDAR

22 articles on how this data actually works — written to be useful while you have a file open.

All articles

Fundamentals

What LiDAR is, what a point cloud is, and the formats they arrive in.

Elevation & terrain

Surface models, terrain models, and the difference that costs people money.

Classification & analysis

Deciding what each point represents, and what to do with the labels.

Formats & technical detail

Coordinate systems, records, point layouts — the bytes themselves.

Your files stay on your device

This is a static site. There is no upload endpoint and no server-side processing, so there is nowhere for a file to be sent even by accident. When you drop a file on a tool, the browser reads it from disk and hands it to code running in a Web Worker on your own machine — a WebAssembly build of laz-perf for LAS and LAZ, plain JavaScript for the other formats.

That is not a policy promise, it is the architecture — and you can check it. Load any tool, disconnect your network, and it keeps working. The deliberate exceptions are the URL fields on the COPC viewer, the LAS/LAZ viewer and the LAS inspector: pointing one at a URL makes your browser fetch that file directly from whoever hosts it, which is the entire point of reading a remote file. Each asks before fetching anything. The point cloud at the top of this page is served from this site, like an image.

How it works goes through the pipeline in detail, including what it cannot do.

Frequently asked questions

What is LidarKit?: A free set of browser-based tools for working with LiDAR files: converting between LAS and LAZ and from E57 or XYZ text, viewing LAS, LAZ, COPC, E57, PLY and XYZ point clouds in 3D, opening GeoTIFF DEMs and orthophotos, checking STL and OBJ meshes, reading a LAS or LAZ file's header and coordinate system, finding the ground and classifying vegetation and buildings, turning a point cloud into an elevation model or an orthophoto and an elevation model into a 3D-printable STL, and comparing two DEMs or two point clouds. Everything runs on your own machine: there is nothing to install, and an account is needed only for a few downloads.
Are my files uploaded anywhere?: No. There is no upload endpoint and no server component — this is a static site, and every tool runs on your own machine: the LAS and LAZ tools through a WebAssembly build of laz-perf in a Web Worker, the E57, PLY and GeoTIFF readers in plain JavaScript. Once a tool has loaded its code it keeps working with your network disconnected, which is the simplest way to verify the claim yourself.
What is the point cloud on this page?: Brussels city centre, Brussels, Belgium, from a 2014 airborne LiDAR survey coloured with aerial imagery. The page first shows a picture rendered from all six million points; on a desktop connection the same viewer you can open your own files in then loads the cloud behind it and takes over, so you can drag to orbit. Phones and data-saver connections keep the picture. Either way, "Explore this point cloud" opens it in the COPC viewer with the full controls.
Which file formats can I open?: LAS and LAZ from version 1.0 to 1.4, in point data record formats 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8, including extra bytes; COPC (.copc.laz) octrees, from a local file or streamed from a URL; E57 laser scans, including multi-scan projects; PLY point clouds, meshes and Gaussian splats, in ASCII or binary; XYZ, PTS, TXT and CSV text point clouds; STL and OBJ meshes; and GeoTIFF rasters, both elevation models and orthophotos. Point formats 4, 5, 9 and 10 store full waveform data, which laz-perf does not support, so those are detected and reported rather than silently mishandled.
What can I get out, as a file?: LAS or LAZ from the converters and the classifier, in any combination of input and output — the point data, header, coordinate system and extra bytes all survive. From the gridding and comparison tools, GeoTIFF: single-band Float32 for a surface, terrain or difference model, with nodata set, and four-band RGBA for an orthophoto. All are tiled and compressed, and all carry the coordinate system the source file declared, so they open in the right place in QGIS, ArcGIS or anything else built on GDAL.
Is there a file size limit?: No fixed limit. Files are read in chunks and results are streamed to a temporary file in the browser's private file system, so peak memory stays at a few megabytes whether the input is 50 MB or 50 GB; a browser without that file system assembles the result in memory instead, and available RAM becomes the ceiling. Multi-gigabyte point clouds are the case these tools were built for; the practical limit is your free disk space.
Do I need an account, or to install anything?: Nothing to install: no extension and no download — open a page and drop a file on it. Converting, viewing and inspecting files needs no account. Downloading the results of the analysis tools — a classified cloud, a DEM or orthophoto, a mesh, a comparison map, exported images — asks you to sign in with a free Google account first. Nothing is stored on your device beyond the browser's ordinary cache, the temporary output file, which is released when you leave the page, and the sign-in session if you sign in.
Is it free, and what is the catch?: It is free: nothing is paid for and there is no trial. A few downloads ask for a free Google sign-in; everything else works without one. The site is intended to be supported by advertising rather than by charging for the tools; because processing is local there are no per-file costs to recover.

Sample data: Brussels city centre, Brussels, Belgium. Airborne LiDAR survey, 2014, coloured from aerial imagery.