Mapbox's tiles are very good. I particularly like the hybrid terrain + road mode, which you can see here: https://homes.stltoday.com/search

I agree that layer is gorgeous.

I think the best open vector map style is OSM liberty [0]. My fork, which includes my generated hillshade and contours, is here [1].

[0]: https://github.com/maputnik/osm-liberty [1]: https://github.com/nst-guide/osm-liberty/blob/gh-pages/style...