Tofu Maps
Create personal maps you can share without accounts
238 followers
Create personal maps you can share without accounts
238 followers
Tofu Maps lets you create personal maps, save places, and share them by link — without signing up. Perfect for travel ideas, city guides, filming locations, or personal collections of places. Simple, fast, and privacy-first.
Free
Launch tags:Maps
Launch Team / Built With
Render Sandboxes: a computer for every agentGive every agent its own machine. Starts in under a second
Promoted
Hi! I’m Ruslan, the maker of Tofu Maps.
The idea came from a simple frustration: I was constantly saving places everywhere — notes, chats, screenshots — but never in one simple map I could easily share. Most map tools felt too heavy: accounts, onboarding, cluttered interfaces. So I built Tofu Maps as a lightweight alternative — something that works instantly.
What I wanted to achieve:
- no signup, no friction
- create a map in seconds
- share it with a single link
- focus on places, not features
People already use it to:
- collect travel ideas
- share city guides with friends
- save filming locations
- keep personal place libraries
This is an indie project, built and designed by one person, and I’m actively improving it.
I’d really love to hear your feedback — what works, what feels missing, and how you’d use it.
Thanks for checking it out, and happy to answer any questions 🙌
@ruslanfatikhov Love the idea, can't wait to try it out! Just wondering, why tofu?
@sharinsights Honestly, I spent a long time searching for a name — most obvious “maps / places / geo” names were either taken or painfully generic.
At some point I was rewatching Initial D and the tofu delivery kept popping up in my head. Tofu Maps just clicked: short, memorable, a bit unexpected — and the domain was free.
No deep symbolism (at least initially 😄), but it turned out to be a good fit: simple, flexible, and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
@ruslanfatikhov Hahaha thanks for sharing! When I think about it, tofu is indeed a versatile ingredient in the kitchen too, absorbing all the flavors of any dish it's made with — kinda like your map's intention to integrate seamlessly with people's personal preferences!
@ruslanfatikhov Congrats on the launch! I really love this idea cuz it's really bothering me when I try to make plans with my friends. I save places across different platforms and it is super annoying when I want to see the places that I save for one particular city. Will there be list sharing features between strangers in the future?
@curiouskitty Good question.
Right now, the strongest value is for “personal place librarians” — people who save places with context (notes, access details, photos, docs) for their own future use, often offline.
The behavioral pattern that stands out:
they create maps for a specific job or trip, not “for the internet”
they add non-public details (codes, instructions, reminders)
maps are small but dense (few places, lots of context per place)
usage is episodic but intentional (prepare → use in the field → keep)
That makes them a good initial wedge because:
value is immediate even with zero public content
no cold-start discovery problem
retention comes from personal utility, not likes or views
Travel planners and creators are interesting follow-ups, but they usually drift toward public sharing and discovery. We want to earn reliability and offline trust first, then expand outward.
positioning this as a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to bloated map apps is a great wedge. since there's no cloud account syncing, does the data live entirely in local storage, and is there an easy way to export (like KML or GeoJSON) if I want to back up my list?
Is there an availabilty of creating an account?
@busmark_w_nika Tofu Maps is designed to work without accounts by default. You can create, edit, and share maps instantly, with no signup, no profiles, and no tracking.
That said, optional accounts are planned for a future version — mainly for:
syncing across devices,
managing multiple maps,
and collaboration.
But they’ll remain opt-in, not required.
The core idea stays the same: Tofu Maps should always be usable as a lightweight, privacy-first tool, even without an account.
@ruslanfatikhov But don't I lose the data I already wrote there (e.g. by clearing the history, cache or so?)
Hi Ruslan – just tried Tofu Maps and the zero-signup flow is brilliant. Love the "focus on places, not features" philosophy.
I work with Alibaba Cloud's Qwen team (open-source LLM, Apache 2.0). I wondered if lightweight AI could ever assist Tofu Maps optionally, for example:
-Auto-translate place notes for multilingual travelers (100+ languages)
-Generate shareable map descriptions in different languages
- Summarize user feedback across languages for faster iteration
All optional, user-controlled, and designed to complement not complicate your accountless ethos.
If useful, I can share a minimal example or sandbox access. If not, no worries at all. Keep shipping thoughtful tools.
– Diallo, Alibaba Cloud (Qwen)
The previous startup l worked at was exactly doing the same thing with additional features.
I do not say your product is better or worse but if you dm me, l can share you the name of the app, it could be insightful for you maybe.
What l've learned from that: no content no remaining users, you have to create thousands of contents(maps), do not wait any user to come and create
@eren_kiratli This matches what I’ve seen as well.
I’d be happy to learn about the app you mentioned — DM is welcome.
One key difference we’re exploring is treating maps as personal tools first, not as a content platform: many lists are private, utilitarian, and created for a specific job (field work, access notes, documentation).
That said, you’re absolutely right about retention — even private tools need immediate value and momentum. Learning from past attempts is exactly why feedback like this is useful.
Great idea, bookmarked!
One thing I would improve: a new map has 6 items and it took me a while to figure out how to remove them - there's something about the initial list UX that makes it unintuitive.