# What is GDAL?

GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats that is released under an MIT style Open Source License by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single raster abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful command line utilities for data translation and processing. The NEWS page describes the September 2025 GDAL/OGR 3.11.4 release.

Documentation for the latest version of GDAL is available as a PDF or a ZIP of individual HTML pages for offline browsing.

See Software using GDAL

You may quote GDAL in publications by using the following Digital Object Identifier: