22 ms·

Google Maps Platform

342 points by petethomas 9y ago

2dvisio 9y ago
Wow. I teach a course of mobile programming with Android. Now I will have to remove the section explaining Google maps API as I cannot ask my students to add their Credit card info online just for the course... Any other free alternative?
- jakecopp 9y ago
  Yep! There are a bunch of Libraries that integrate with OpenStreetMap, see the "Libraries for Developers" section: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android Mapbox also has Android implementations, not sure if you can sign up without a credit card though.
  - EQmapbox 9y ago
    Definitely! CC not required for Mapbox account. Note - I work at Mapbox, on accounts
- spectre256 9y ago
  Hey 2dvisio, I'm an ex-Mapzen alum who runs https://geocode.earth https://geocode.earth. We don't have a permanent free tier at the moment (our geocoder is solid but the service is new!), but we want to find ways to contribute to the community where we can. I would be happy to set up a temporary free tier on our service for one of your classes. Shoot me an email, julian at geocode dot earth and we can figure something out
- DomesticMouse 9y ago
  Fwiw, there is a viable work around. Android (and iOS) usage of the Google Maps APIs remain free. See the Mobile Native Dynamic Maps line on our pricing sheet: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ You can construct API keys that are restricted to an Android signing key, use it for the duration of the class, and then revoke it after the course work is done.
  - rhodysurf 9y ago
    Oh wow... why is this not mentioned higher? Big break for me that iOS and Android remain free
thecodemonkey 9y ago
I just wanted to add that geocod.io is now a viable alternative to Google Maps for geocoding in terms of both accuracy and pricing. We’re going to continue having a no-credit-card-required 2,500/day free limit, as well as the most affordable pricing, without restrictions. Including a plan that allows for unlimited geocoding. https://geocod.io/pricing https://geocod.io/pricing Full disclaimer: I’m one of the Geocodio founders.
- bigsassy 9y ago
  Just wanted to second this. I'm a current customer and have been pretty happy with the accuracy and quality of their data.
dskendall 9y ago
Wow, this is a massive price increase... free tier cut from 750,000 dynamic map loads per month to 56,571! With new prices it'd cost $4,023/mo to pay for what used to be free. Another way of putting it: used to get 25,000 free dynamic map loads per day, now only get 1,886 free map loads per day. 92% less for free. And this is assuming you use the full $200 credit only for the dynamic map loads and not partially for the other Google Maps APIs.
sleemanj 9y ago
Gah, this is so confusing, I've got small sites developed for clients many many years old running various maps based stuff off API Keys in my account, now I have to add MY billing information to them or get the client to set themselves up a google cloud platform account and developer and project and keys and ...... Good grief, that's totally impractical to have website administrators, my clients, to do that, even I as a seasoned developer hate trying to navigate around the complex labyrinth that is the Google developer console stuff. It's all so complicated. I just want a page I can point my customer to, "go here, type in your domain name, enter your credit card number in case you need to be billed by Google for usage, and tell me the API key it spits out". On top of that, it's still of course totally open to abuse and quota theft, referer checking is not security. I can see a burgeoning black market in api keys forming.
- lukeqsee 9y ago
  We support cases like this by using domain names as authentication. We plan to eventually support automatic spinning off of domains into their own account (e.g., for your clients after you're finished with a project). But for now, they could set up their own account with their domain and it would just work for you as a dev. If you're curious: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com. Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you're interested.
- n_u_l_l 9y ago
  It is totally hidden but you don’t actually have to add a billing account if you’re sure that you stay below the $200 monthly usage. You can find it here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch... "Is a credit card or billing account required?" I also experienced similar issues when I was still freelancing and managed the hosting for some clients. I wanted to host clients on Google Cloud or AWS but letting clients make an account they are unable to manage looked like a bad idea to me. If their website gets a lot of unexpected (maybe unwanted) traffic, they get a large bill which they blame me for. Because of this reason I had to go with shared hosting for small clients, and Heroku for companies that cared about uptime so everyone always knew what the costs are. Something like billing limits would fix this. So freelancers could host their clients websites on their own account (or using AWS organizations) and charge their clients the billing limit for a year upfront.
zylepe 9y ago
I run https://onthegomap.com https://onthegomap.com which uses Google Maps API. Last month it cost about $500 (for direction requests). Under the new pricing model it will cost $30,000 per month: $2,500 for page views, $27,000 for direction requests, and $1,000 for elevation request. It makes $300-500 per month in ad revenue. Time to shut down?
- tj89 9y ago
  While not to your degree I'm in a similar position. They only gave us 30 days to figure all this out which is ridiculous. Where did you find your monthly API calls? I can't seem to get any numbers other than daily for the last week
  - zylepe 9y ago
    https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/dashboard https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/dashboard - at first I thought I was in the clear, then I realized I had 1 day selected.
    - tj89 9y ago
      I don't think that's specific enough. For example all the places API calls are grouped together but there are 13 types at different prices. I don't see any way to figure out how much we'll be paying. For me looks like I went from basically free to $600/mo just for map views. I have no idea how much more I'll have to pay for API calls because they completely obfuscate the data. Now we have 30 days to figure out how to make the money work or find another solution. Pretty crappy of an API provider (let alone Google) to do this. At least now we know not to trust our apps / sites infrastructure to Google... they aren't the same "do no evil" company they used to be.
      - zylepe 9y ago
        I got pricing info from https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ and attempted to map existing api calls to the new names. What APIs do you use?
forrestthewoods 9y ago
Does anyone offer a competitive service that computes directions with time-of-day travel times? I built a tool awhile back to visualize commute ranges. It’d be nice to move this off Google Maps API. https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-378009330ffa https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-3...
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Graphhopper does this, based on TomTom data. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mapbox do something similar in the future.
- Foremost 9y ago
  The TomTom Routing API offers directions based on real-time and predictive traffic. You can check it out for free: https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing Note: I work for TomTom
- EQmapbox 9y ago
  Yep mapbox/driving-traffic profile of the Directions API factors in current and historic traffic conditions - https://www.mapbox.com/api-documentation/#directions https://www.mapbox.com/api-documentation/#directions. As my name suggests, I work for Mapbox :)
  - forrestthewoods 9y ago
    Neat! 60 requests per minute is not very many. Sadly I’m not sure any service will be able to do what I want at an affordable rate. :(
    - EQmapbox 9y ago
      I'd love to make this work, Forrest - drop my name in a note to help@mapbox.com and let's see if we can get you setup with the Isochrone plugin (https://blog.mapbox.com/add-isochrones-to-your-next-application-e9e84a62345f https://blog.mapbox.com/add-isochrones-to-your-next-applicat...) which sits on top of the Mapbox Matrix API. https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-378009330ffa https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-3... is awesome!
mongol 9y ago
What is the simplest way to self host a map that will serve as bakgrund to WMS data in Leaflet? I need nothing fancy, can do without deep zoom. The usage is within an app so embedding in the app could be an option. I find the mapping landscape confusing.
forcer 9y ago
does anyone has experience with here.com ? I did not use yet but was engaged with the sales team (not great). it seems their pricing is quite comparable with mapbox. more here : https://developer.here.com/plans https://developer.here.com/plans
- Foremost 9y ago
  You should evaluate the TomTom offering too. https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api
petetnt 9y ago
With the new pricing I think anyone who has been paying any significant amount for Google Maps usage would be better served with MapBox. The free tier usage in GMaps was rather lenient, but with this pricing change I don't see many reasons to stick with Google Maps's subpar developer experience and performance (except for the extra churn required). Open source idea: Google Maps -> MapBox shim layer
fredley 9y ago
What fresh hell is this transition tool? It goes through a few weird, semi/non-styled authentication pages on a variety of domains (e.g. withgoogle.com). It uses non-standard animations that look broken. The whole things is a disaster that is clearly not finished. The whole thing smacks of 90-00's era Microsoft 'wizards'.
endijs 9y ago
If i did my math correctly, then in my situation 0$ converted to ~400$. Google gave 500$ free credit, which will run out in 1 month. Simplest way to optimize things will be to replace dynamic maps with static and remove StreetView. Then i should be ~200$ monthly limit. Which is not safe place to be. Edit: Actually 500$ will last for 3 months. As each month there are 200$ free. Thus if bill is 400$, then half if covered by the free tier and second half from credit.
Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
There's (justifiably) a lot of love for Mapbox in this thread as an alternative, but as remarked, their pricing isn't particularly cheap (why should it be, they sell on the quality of the product). So the other option is to self-host tools using OpenStreetMap data. Some pointers: * Raster tiled maps: the canonical instructions are at switch2osm.org; put it on commodity hardware such as Hetzner/OVH. * Vector maps: a lot of development in this area at the moment and you could happily lose yourself for days among all the emerging solutions, but probably the easiest out-of-the-box solution is openmaptiles.org. * Geocoding: Photon (https://github.com/komoot/photon https://github.com/komoot/photon) is the easiest to set up because it comes with precompiled indexes - no need to generate your own. Based on ElasticSearch, needs SSD for reasonable performance. * Routing: OSRM (Mapbox's routing engine) and Graphhopper are both self-hostable. OSRM is very RAM-hungry, but blazingly fast. This is just a start - there are many more options available, not least the whole stack developed by Mapzen before they shut down. The raw OSM data is downloadable from planet.openstreetmap.org (full dump) or http://download.geofabrik.de/ http://download.geofabrik.de/ (regional extracts). Worth noting as well that there are a few well-established and competitively priced indie providers based on OSM: Thunderforest (http://thunderforest.com/ http://thunderforest.com/), Geofabrik (http://geofabrik.de/ http://geofabrik.de/), Graphhopper (https://www.graphhopper.com/ https://www.graphhopper.com/).
- lukeqsee 9y ago
  We also do map tiles (based on OSM), static maps, and routing. We’re a new startup this year, and one of our goals is transparent and reasonable pricing. https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com
- zylepe 9y ago
  I recently did an evaluation of Valhalla, ORSM, and Graphhopper for routing based on openstreetmap data. Valhalla was nice in that it could preprocess and serve results with only a few GB of RAM, but it could only handle <1rps as the end was more than a few miles from the start since it doesn’t use contraction hierarchies. OSRM was super fast, especially for very short routes (>1k rps on a single core) but it requires 300+GB of RAM to preprocess the world and 64GB of RAM to serve direction requests which gets a bit too expensive for me. Graphhopper was nearly as fast as OSRM for short routes, but just as fast for longer routes. It can preprocess the world with only 64GB of RAM, and can serve direction requests happily on machine with only 16GB of RAM. I ended up going with Graphhopper, but still may need to shut down my site...
nomad543 9y ago
If you enter your credit card in the API Console, you are enabling Google to bill you for any other API you use which you were relying on the free quota, so be careful. Happened to me.
levashovbiz 9y ago
For those who are not in 98% that Google believe will not be affected, I combined a list of alternative to Google Maps API, with focus on geocoding - https://goo.gl/5GUVNd https://goo.gl/5GUVNd Not affiliated with any of the providers listed and mainly based on this thread, just added there pricing information, free tier limits and reference.
billysielu 9y ago
Couple of thoughts: 1. To avoid making a loss due to map costs, sites may have to create a source of revenue which scales in proportion to the amount of maps used. Advertising? Google Advertising? 2. It seems quite easy to attack someone by linking to their map content on social media. Loads of traffic = loads of cost. So sites may need to consider devising a 'mapping cost defense' of some sort.
- IanCal 9y ago
  I don't think 2 would work, we use static maps and they only work based on the site they're loaded from. They won't even work on our dev instance because I've not whitelisted the domain. Unless lots of people are going to your actual site, of course.
  - elyobo 9y ago
    I have a project which runs a variety of sites for our network - currently ~900 different domains. Restricting keys by domain name is not really practical for us.
    - IanCal 9y ago
      A list of 900 isn't really a huge problem, is it? Do they share anything common (many x.mycompany.com)? You can use wildcards.
      - elyobo 9y ago
        Many do, but not all, and even then just wildcarding the common bits would leave it pretty much wide open. Maybe if they allowed regular expressions then it could be targeted reasonably closely, or if there was an API I could use to generate the keys then I could provision specific credentials for each site...
zenovision 9y ago
I just compared pricing for different providers and here are my results: Usage: 10000 requests / day Google Maps: (3600000 - (28000free * 12)) / 1000 * 7 = 22848 $ per year Yandex Maps: 360000 rubles or 5600$ per year, but much cheaper for higher volumes than 10000/day Mapbox: (3600000 - (50000free * 12)) / 1000 * 0.5 + (fix 500 * 12) = 7500 $ per year Bing Maps: No pricing on website, need to contact support
- nomad543 9y ago
  I've been researching alternatives and Mapfit offers 100,000 API requests a day for free. I haven't read the documentation but looks very promising.
  - nomad543 9y ago
    Well a truly bizarre thing happened, the Mapfit staff just altered the text on their pricing box from 100,000/day to 2,500/day (Google cache confirms). Doesn't look very professional.
    - yurishimo 9y ago
      They’ve probably been getting hammered with signups. It sucks they pulled such an underhand move but it’s obvious why they did it.
- Foremost 9y ago
  Have you checked out TomTom and Here too?
deleted 9y ago
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cup-of-tea 9y ago
What they don't tell you is the underlying data is of extremely dubious quality. It's a hodgepodge of proprietary data, data automatically generated from satellite imagery and open government data from various sources all merged together in an automatic or at least thoroughly non-expert way. To a cartography geek it's an absolute nightmare.
- yurishimo 9y ago
  I think a lot of people are using the stylized Map views over the satellite views. I’m my experience, those are pretty good for showing where things are, maybe if not topographically accurate.
  - Foremost 9y ago
    You've got a point. If it's just about showing things on a map, OSM will do. When it comes to routing or geocoding, you need quality, consistency and accuracy. And that is only offered by map makers like Here or TomTom. Both run their own Maps API platforms.
oeff 9y ago
I am searching for an alternative to google maps. I am using the places-API of google maps to evaluate the branche of a company. Often the google-places-API returns something like this: > "types" : [ "point_of_interest", "establishment" ] This is not exact enough. Is there a possibility to gain better information of a company by API? Thanks a lot.
kirchhoff 9y ago
I run https://www.instantstreetview.com https://www.instantstreetview.com which does 100,000+ 'map loads' per day. The price for these has effectively increased by a factor of 28 ($0.50 -> $14 per 1000), which is completely unsustainable ($1,400 daily!)
- dazbradbury 9y ago
  Will be extremely sad to see fun maps projects disappear as a result of this. We're also seeing a huge increase in cost (we are a paying user already) at https://www.openrent.co.uk/ https://www.openrent.co.uk/, but I kind of hoped commercial projects would be treated differently to non-commercial ones.
  - kirchhoff 9y ago
    When I spoke to the sales team last year, they admitted they had no appropriate plan to suit small, but popular projects. They attempted to shoehorn me onto the premium plan but many aspects of it are geared toward larger entities - very steep initial cost (per map load) with discounts for huge volumes.
  - rmc 9y ago
    OpenStreetMap is a volunteer, free data alternative
  - lukeqsee 9y ago
    This is a shameless plug for my company, Stadia Maps. We started the company because of situations just like this. We'd be happy to talk about a much more reasonable cost. :) Please email if you're interested: luke@stadiamaps.com or take a look at our website https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- mapsmaps 9y ago
  There are other pricing tiers that might significantly reduce that cost. Contact us here and we can help: contact@navagis.com
nomad543 9y ago
So I signed up to Mapbox, I wonder how the free tier works. I didn't enter any billing details, so what will happen if I reach the 50,000 calls within a month, will it stop working or will I be invoiced later for the calls over 50,000?
- aligoes 9y ago
  (I work at Mapbox) We'll keep your maps on and send you a note letting you know you're over the limit. At the end of your billing cycle we'll invoice you for anything you use beyond the limit and, once the invoice is out, you'll have a ten day grace period to add your card.
vlamingsjef 9y ago
For everyone thinking they are going to be billed for unwanted overuse. You can restrict API access and rate limit the requests.
- thinkingemote 9y ago
  Do you have any documentation for this claim? All I can see is that this is for those on Premium Plans only which is a "Contact Sales" only tier.
Jw777 9y ago
Something is not totally clear and will make a big difference. Prior to this with standard it was 25,000 free loads per day. Is this being dropped? It seems like it but I received an email saying based on my usage I would be within the $200 free credit limit.
ScribbleMaps 9y ago
I can provide some of you with free unlimited mapdata solutions for geocoding and base layer data with accreditation. I run my own OSM server instances. Hit support on ScribbleMaps.com and ask for Jonathan so the ticket is forwarded to me.
elyobo 9y ago
It seems like sticking a CDN in front of the static map API could be used to reduce costs quite a bit there as well, especially if you forced it to cache more aggressively than the cache control headers returned by Google indicate. Has anyone tried this?
- elyobo 9y ago
  Technically possible, but sadly prohibited by their T&Cs[1]. It's a bit annoying, if they wanted to charge per impression they should charge by impression rather than having per-api-call pricing but forcing you to call the API repeatedly for the same thing. [1] https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms see section 10.5.d
n_u_l_l 9y ago
Google can change their prices at any time, and they just proved that they do. There is some kind of trust I have/had in cloud providers to be fair when it comes down to vendor lock-in. One of the things I expect a cloud provider to do is not suddenly increase prices and instead give their clients a reasonable period (a year would be perfect, but I think 6 months is a reasonable period) so they can change their usage to minimize their new costs according to the new pricing or transfer to another provider if the costs are too high. But Google just proved that they don’t really care about their clients. If you made an app that heavily relied on the Google Maps API, and you spend $3K a month now, you just received a mail that your costs might be increasing to $60K a month and you might need to drop all your current projects/tasks to migrate the app to another service.
eruci 9y ago
There are alternatives. I'm building a price comparison chart for various providers here: https://geocode.xyz/pricing https://geocode.xyz/pricing
lemonlyman516 9y ago
Thanks for the shoutouts for Mapbox here. I'm Ali from Mapbox (ali@mapbox.com) hit me up if you have any questions.
elyobo 9y ago
Larger size (and higher resolution) static images are currently only available to paid up "premium" map subscribers; presumably this functionality will now become available to everyone, as we'll all have to be paid users (even if you don't end up paying anything because of the $200 in credit). Is there any confirmation of this anywhere? Larger sizes make switching to static maps more viable for us (one reason we switched _to_ the dynamic maps for some use cases in the first place).
justicezyx 9y ago
Finally!
akamaka 9y ago
> Beginning on June 11, 2018, you’ll need to enable billing with a credit card and have a valid API key for all projects. This will give you the ability to scale easily with less downtime and fewer performance issues. In addition, we’re simplifying our 18 individual APIs into three products: Maps, Routes, and Places. > Also, in June 2016 we announced that we would stop supporting keyless usage, meaning any request that doesn’t include an API key or Client ID. This will go into effect on June 11th, and keyless access will no longer be supported. At that time, keyless calls to the Maps JavaScript API and Street View API will return low-resolution maps watermarked with “for development purposes only.” Keyless calls to any of the following APIs will return an error: Maps Static API (including Static Street View), Directions API, Distance Matrix API, Geocoding API, Geolocation API, Places API, Roads API, and Time Zone API. https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/
- canada_dry 9y ago
  The only silver lining is that www.openstreetmap.org (OSM) will hopefully get more love. Since google admits that 98% of current users will continue to incur 0 cost this is simply a blatant way of getting a real name associated with their user data.
  - jedberg 9y ago
    Why does everyone always assume the worst? > this is simply a blatant way of getting a real name associated with their user data Or maybe it's a way to control access to their systems in a more reasonable and auditable way, and prevent some abuse too.
    - tj89 9y ago
      don't forget they are raising their prices a ton as well
    - theDoug 9y ago
      Any service priced $free or not tied to a credit card tends to see people play at incredibly dumb levels of abuse. Within a month of Gmail going public I remember people already trying to string accounts together as a makeshift multi-GB FTP store. Disclosure: I work in Google Cloud, not on this
dumbfounder 9y ago
Wow, 10x price increase or more for just about everything.
- haney 9y ago
  Kind of hard to compare apples to apples, there was a pretty steep minimum on previous contracts, I'd imagine that high volume users could negotiate volume discounts beyond those listed. At least this way there's not a huge cliff between the free product and a contract for larger volumes.
- resoluteteeth 9y ago
  It would be nice if this leads to more interest in alternatives (OSM based systems including maplet). Previously, when google made the initial shift in this direction a few years ago, it seemed like there was a brief period when more people were considering alternatives, but since most people were able to continue using the free tier this tapered off pretty quickly.
  - SahAssar 9y ago
    > OSM based systems including maplet You mean leaflet.js?
    - 0x0 9y ago
      Leaflet is a nice javascript library for slippy maps, but you still need to bring your own tileserver (OSM is not free to embed for anything beyond light usage I believe)
      - SahAssar 9y ago
        Yeah, I just had never heard of maplet, so I was unsure if that s/he really meant leaflet or maplet.
        resoluteteeth 9y ago
paganel 9y ago
Not a native English speaker and also not that well versed when it comes to marketing talk, but what exactly does "$200 monthly free credit" mean? (from this page: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch...). Do you get a sort of voucher with which you'll be able to use Google Maps services worth $200 each month? Will Google automatically start billing you once you surpass that quota? I'm in the dark here. Later edit: I've found the answer to my first question, as in yes, the "$200 monthly free credit" acts like a voucher, sort of: > Can I still use Google Maps Platform for free? Yes. Starting June 11, 2018, when you enable billing, you get $200 free usage every month for Maps, Routes, or Places. Based on the millions of users using our APIs today, around 98% of them can continue to use Google Maps Platform for free with this credit. Still don't know the details of how to set up things so that I'll never surpass that traffic quota of theirs. I'm part of that 98% they mention with a couple of small personal websites that aren't intended to bring any revenue, I'm not that hyped with giving Google my billing details. Later later edit: It seems that it's possible not to give them your billing details so that they'll automatically "degrade" your API calls once the traffic quota is reached without billing you. I guess that's the route I will take, it's the least amount of effort and seeing as my projects won't reach those quotas it also makes sense not to worry about API calls "degradation". > Is a credit card or billing account required? Even though your first $200 of monthly usage is free, all Google Cloud Platform services require a credit card and billing account, to cover any amount you spend over this free credit. If you are billed, we'll credit your account for the first $200 of monthly usage. If you choose not to add a billing account, there is a risk that if your usage exceeds $200 in a given month, your Maps API implementation will be degraded or other API requests will return an error. If your estimated usage will be above $200 a month and you don't have a credit or debit card to set up a billing account, a local Google Maps Partner may be able to help.
- asdsa5325 9y ago
  They don't charge you for the first $200 worth of service.
- theDoug 9y ago
  From a couple points below that mention, which I think answers both parts of your question: > your first $200 of monthly usage is free, and you can set usage caps to ensure you don’t go over this amount.
wnevets 9y ago
is the scrollbar for "See how it works" suppose to be broken?
- enriK71 9y ago
  works perfectly fine on my end
- nik736 9y ago
  Works for me. Safari on macOS. What's broken for you?
  - wnevets 9y ago
    either i'm nuts or they just fixed it.
- joemccall86 9y ago
  I had to unblock google-developers.appspot.com from loading.
jefe_ 9y ago
Does anyone know why Amazon doesn't have a maps offering on AWS? I've heard their internal logistics GIS services are pretty advanced and it surprises me they don't have a GIS category on AWS to the point I'm convinced there must some very specific reason they've chosen not to implement. Companies like MapBox and Carto seem to be doing well, Microsoft and Google have map services, demand seems to exist. Additionally it seems they would find value in possessing a list of companies utilizing such services and be able to offer some interesting services. It's puzzling.
- jillesvangurp 9y ago
  They invested in and are partnering with Here for maps and navigation. Having worked there, providing global maps and navigation is a very non trivial thing to pull off; which is why there are only handful of companies doing their own maps. It took Apple and Google many years to stop depending on third party maps that they were licensing from Teleatlas (now owned by Tom Tom) and Navteq (now part of Here), which were at the time the only suppliers of maps and navigation world wide. Apple is still in the process of shifting away from Tom Tom I think. Ironically both got more serious about doing their own maps after Nokia bought Navteq. So, Amazon did the smart thing and simply partnered instead of reinventing that wheel so they could have a maps solution for their Android fork and not depend on Google Maps while still implementing the relevant APIs for app compatibility. Here is in fact using AWS so that ticks that box ... OSM is nice but entrenched in licensing issues that are preventing adoption by big corporations. That's the reason that you'll be hard pressed to find anything but niche products for navigation based on OSM. It's a great solution if you are not mixing your own data sources with what OSM provides but that is not an option for most commercial players and OSM licensing is all about preventing exactly that. Microsoft had OSM maps for a while on Bing but they couldn't do any fancy features based on their own data on top of it so it got scrapped.
- Foremost 9y ago
  Indeed, even Microsoft Azure launched their own Location Services as part of their cloud offering: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/location-based-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/location-based-se...
- 9y ago
kinard 9y ago
WOW, my costs are going to go from about $320 per month to $3,750 per month. Time to find a different solution! GULP!
- tj89 9y ago
  and you have 30 days to somehow make it work or switch. for an API service that's seems pretty irresponsible to it's users. You would think they'd give you a few months notice at minimum.
- lukeqsee 9y ago
  Shameless plug: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com We do map tiles and static maps, along with basic routing.
- spectre256 9y ago
  Hey kinard, I'm an ex-Mapzen teammember, and we've set up a new, paid, geocoding service called https://geocode.earth https://geocode.earth. I suspect we can give you what you need around geocoding, especially autocomplete, for much less than Google. Feel free to request an invite or reach out to me personally.
- sytelus 9y ago
  This won't happen unless you have a huge traffic which usually should translate to revenues that can support it. There is nothing wrong with services that you use to generate profits but have to pay for. Services like maps with 99% coverage of the world takes enormous amount of efforts over many years of sweat by very talented team. I know of countries where government wasn't able to produce good maps for decades but Google was. Currently while I travel, I very heavily rely on Google Maps. It's a pretty amazing service and I have paid more for stupid Angry Bird.
  - tj89 9y ago
    100 users hitting 10 pages a day = 1000 map loads a day. 1000 map loads a day * 30 days = 30000 map loads which is over the "free" amount. This assumes NO api calls at all, only map loads. This change will affect all apps that have any sort of actual user base. I think you may be underestimating the how quickly you can go through API calls even without many users. While I understand they want to make money, giving developers 30 days to now pay 40x what they paid before is ridiculous.
m-localhost 9y ago
I wish it would be easier for people to contribute to open source projects (like wiki voyage etc) than to Google Places. (it's a bit off topic and I like the Places API, but that's a huge amount of valuable data that contributors are submitting there for free)
- reustle 9y ago
  Agreed. I contribute to Google maps a lot and I've looked into contributing to open street maps but the options seemed pretty clunky. I recommend mapbox to all of my clients over Google maps.
  - jakecopp 9y ago
    Just click the edit button on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/, I find the interface quite nice. It's quite addictive! That being said, I don't know of a similarly easy to use editor on Android for simple things like adding opening hours or addresses.
    - mtmail 9y ago
      http://vespucci.io/ http://vespucci.io/ is active developed and pretty powerful. For simply adding opening hours or a phone number I use https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (iOS, Android).
      - m-localhost 9y ago
        I think maps.me is one of the few apps that are easy to use and contribute to OSM. Unfortunately there was some controversy, because maps got vandalized or filled with trivial/garbage data, because user didn't understand that their notes ended up in a public database.
    - rmc 9y ago
      StreetComplete is a very nice, targeted OSM editing app https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete
huevosabio 9y ago
Did they change the usage limits of the Distance Matrix API? Previously they limited to "Maximum of 25 origins and 25 destinations per server-side request", even if you were a premium package subscriber, which is quite restrictive...
jpdus 9y ago
> If you are currently using an API key, please read the email we sent you on May 1st, which provides a high-level estimate of whether your future bill will change. Did anyone actually get this mail? I am using a key and even got a receipt yesterday but did not get this mail about pricing changes (user from Germany). Edit: Wow. I am currently using Places Radarsearch for a side project which currently has a (generous) free limit of 150.000 calls per day. If I read the pricing table correctly, I am now getting 5000 calls per month on the free tier (which also has to suffice for all other maps API calls). That's a 900-fold reduction..
- apex18 9y ago
  If you were using the free tier of Places Nearby or Text Searches (aka radar) and staying just under the daily search limit, your previous yearly bill of $0 from Google will now be roughly: 1.7 million dollars
- theduro 9y ago
  I got one
- sjm-lbm 9y ago
  Just a data point, but I got one about a minute ago - as I was reading this thread. So, I suppose you still might get one - it seems clear that they didn't all go out on May 1st.
- nik736 9y ago
  Just got one.
- dmortin 9y ago
  The pricing/limit changes are very aggressive. It's hard to believe they don't affect 98% of current users according to them.
  - puzzle 9y ago
    I suspect that's 98% of users in the literal sense, with a very long tail of them having very little traffic. It's not the same as 98% of user traffic, i.e. API requests. :-)
jasonHav 9y ago
As someone who's only every used Google Maps, can anyone suggest a solid alternative? Geocoding and directions would be the minimum I'd need - with solid data in Australia.
- Foremost 9y ago
  For professional maps, routing, places and traffic, you can try TomTom Maps (ndlr I work there). developer.tomtom.com Free evaluations and the pricing is pretty straightforward, no subscriptions, no limits, no ads.
- pveugen 9y ago
  Mapbox offers maps, geocoding, and directions, with solid coverage in Australia. https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/ https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/ Happy to answer any questions. Disclaimer: I work at Mapbox.
  - buckhx 9y ago
    Does mapbox provide place details data yet? Last time I spoke w/ sales it was a planned feature, but not released.
    - pveugen 9y ago
      What kind of places details are you looking for? Depending on the geographic region, Mapbox has data for regions, cities, addresses, zipcodes, and points-of-interest (POI). This is the coverage per region: https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/#coverage https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/#coverage
  - puzzle 9y ago
    How long does it take for an edit to propagate from OSM to Mapbox's tiles? Average/worst case. I know this is a tough problem, so I don't envy you. :-)
    - mtmail 9y ago
0x0 9y ago
Wonder if lots of people will jump to OpenStreetMap without realizing their open tile servers aren't a free-for-all? https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/
- rmc 9y ago
  The osm.org tile servers are run by unpaid volunteers, on donated hosting. So yes, they won't let you do whatever you want. But with OSM you can self host and get the same as what's on osm.org
- mgmtconsultant 9y ago
  This will probably be a huge boost to Mapbox - they have great tech, are built on top of OSM, and have much better pricing
- NKosmatos 9y ago
  As you correctly state, their servers aren’t free and hammering them will incur a ban. On the other hand if you are a high profile user why not copy the free data from http://planet.openstreetmap.org http://planet.openstreetmap.org and have your own server? Or if this is technically difficult, you can find paid for services with OSM data (I guess if you go down this road, it’s like paying Google)
  - lallysingh 9y ago
    There were easy to use docker images for serving your own, the last time I checked a few years ago.
plumeria 9y ago
One thing I like about AWS is that all services have a pricing section. I am interested in the routing service (https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/routes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/routes/) but there is only a contact sales button, no public pricing info available.
- Foremost 9y ago
  You can also check out this routing service https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing It's affordable and uses live and predictive traffic
- mkozlows 9y ago
  https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ has pricing for routes.
  - outside2344 9y ago
    Holy mother of god is that expensive. Check out Mapbox for a nice alternative.
eden123 9y ago
I find it very interesting that Google Maps has 1 billion Monthly Active Users compared to Facebook’s 2+ billion. Where is this huge difference coming from?
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  People who use other maps or don't use maps at all? Nobody uses a mapping solution just because their friends use that mapping solution.
- ballenf 9y ago
  I lot of people never change their travel patterns. Then there are those who use Waze (I think these are kept separate even though owned by Google) or Apple Maps.
- Skunkleton 9y ago
  Probably from people that don't use maps all that often? Back before I lived in the bay area I rarely used maps simply because I didn't need them. The area was small enough that I just knew where everything was.
- bhandziuk 9y ago
  I'd guess that a lot of kids don't use maps that often. Which doesn't account for all the difference.
- tybit 9y ago
  In addition to the other good answers, there’s also the difference that for maps there are actually alternatives. E.g many people use Apple maps just because it is there by default on IOS.
jazoom 9y ago
If you're on mobile, I'll save you some time. There is no way to locate the pricing page. And yes, the navigation menu is completely empty. I was able to get on a desktop and find the pricing page. Here's a link: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/
- ravenstine 9y ago
  What is "embed advanced"? A search turns up nothing. I'd hate to make a custom map style, embed a map with it, and suddenly be charged upwards of $14 per thousand calls. Seems pretty steep regardless of what it is. Mapbox doesn't charge that much for anything on a per-call basis.
- robocat 9y ago
  iOS11 added a "Desktop view" mode but I am not sure the feature is well known (Android has had the feature forever, so by mobile, you mean iOS I think). From memory, in Safari, tap share, then scroll across to desktop view. I don't have an iDevice with me at moment, but it should work.
  - lathiat 9y ago
    Tap Share, then "Request Desktop Site" However I have found that it is quite unreliable at working. Not sure if it's just changing the viewport for CSS, or the user-agent, or what. But it frequently doesn't work.
    - ijanos 9y ago
      you can long-touch the refresh button for quick access
  - jazoom 9y ago
    By "mobile" I mean Android. And since Android has many browsers "Desktop view" may or may not exist, and if it does exist and can mean many different things. I don't bother to use it because I never found it to work properly. I haven't tried for a couple of years, though.
samstave 9y ago
Ive always wondered why Google Maps hasnttaken that of a topological yellow pages - where you have a limited blurb that can appear on your location beacon if your a business and if I search for "thing near me" your location and blurb can pop on a users' map and if they click on you to go to you, think of it as an ad click to your location. Or is this already a thing? EDIT: This looks exactly like what they are doing with that little rating icon above the building...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I think it's one of the things that was behind the big push for Google+. Facebook won, but at the time they hadn't quite yet become the default place for small businesses to do social media.
zenovision 9y ago
WOW that prices are absolutely insane. 0.17$ per 10 calls? Even prices from Oracle are now looks like peanuts.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
Mapbox has an excellent alternative map platform based largely but not entirely on OpenStreetMap data. Mapbox GL JS in particular is a joy to work with and extend. https://www.mapbox.com/ https://www.mapbox.com/ It's not free, but it's very easy to use and the pricing is roughly 1/10th of Google's when you get past the free tier: https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ Mapzen used to be an alternative but sadly they shut down. However many of their products live on in open source or paid-hosted alternatives. See https://www.nextzen.org/ https://www.nextzen.org/ for a start.
- jakecopp 9y ago
  Mapbox's maps look great, though I wish they had a generic product like Google Maps that I could use. Does any such general navigation app using Mapbox exist? Basically a vector OpenStreetMap with good search and routing.
  - mtmail 9y ago
    https://www.mapquest.com/ https://www.mapquest.com/ uses Mapbox in the background. https://maps.mapcat.com/ https://maps.mapcat.com/ uses OpenStreetMap vector tiles. On mobile I use https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (free, offline use possible).
    - jakecopp 9y ago
      MapQuest feels a bit strange with the huge amount of advertising. I'd much rather pay.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    OsmAnd can do this. It's generally recommended as the OpenStreetMap app, but almost everyone uses it with offline maps. If you click past that and enable the built-in online tiles addon, you can have tiles. Search and navigation, I don't remember seeing it in recent versions but there are so many options, I'm almost certain it must be in there somewhere. Search for custom or online navigation provider in OsmAnd and you should be able to find it. As you see, it's not exactly built for this type of usage, but it is supported and the app is generally considered as the best alternative out there, so it might be worth a try!
synesso 9y ago
TallyGo is a startup offering a routing SDK for Android & iOS. The pricing is much more affordable and capability for app integration is strong. It has realtime traffic & advanced routing. (Disclaimer: I work as a developer at TallyGo) https://tallygo.com/ https://tallygo.com/
robryan 9y ago
I don’t know how competitive the pricing is, but it is interesting how the comments go when Google does try and charge a high price for something over simply monetizing via advertising. I wonder if the perception would be different if Google Maps were a standalone startup developing a world class mapping product. Where the common manta would be along the lines of double your pricing.
- jakecopp 9y ago
  I think the problem is users don't want to pay and have their data scrutinized for ads. It would be like if you paid Facebook and still had your data going to many third parties. I think Mapbox has a very different reputation for this reason (also they contribute back to OpenStreetMap).
  - draeert 9y ago
    Google doesn't store user data when you use the paid version of maps. For example when you call places API on the premium plan nothing is ever stored on Google's side after the query is made and results returned.
    - sam_goody 9y ago
      Can you provide a link for that? When I used Google Apps for business (not overly cheap)they were using more of our data than we were. Of course, maps API might be different, but would love a source.
mnutt 9y ago
Having contacted Google Maps sales years ago, their salespeople were some of the worst I've ever encountered--rude, inconsistent aggressive pricing, and vaguely threatening. I avoid them at all costs, and as others mention, Mapbox is a great alternative.
rajacombinator 9y ago
Back when I was working on a map heavy app, Google Maps API seemed designed to discourage usage. Bad/opaque pricing, usage limits, assumption that Google robots will pull the plug with no warning. In fact all Google APIs seem to be this way - they are not really interested in enabling 3rd party apps through their APIs. Seems bizarre to me, because they could gobble up the businesses of companies like Mapbox overnight if they made an effort here.
elliotlarson 9y ago
Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm not seeing what the cost is for higher resolution maps. As I understand it, in addition to usage beyond what the free account allowed, a paid account used to also give you access to higher resolution map tiles and a higher zoom level via their API.
tj89 9y ago
So all those sites have 30 days to figure out something or start shelling out money? That's really short notice From what I can find the "dashboard" only shows the highly variable "per day" numbers so you can't even see how many calls you're doing per month... which is pretty shady For a company that touts "do no evil" they are going to hurt a lot of free websites and small businesses / projects with basically no notice.

342 points by petethomas 9y ago

Wow. I teach a course of mobile programming with Android. Now I will have to remove the section explaining Google maps API as I cannot ask my students to add their Credit card info online just for the course... Any other free alternative?

jakecopp 9y ago
Yep! There are a bunch of Libraries that integrate with OpenStreetMap, see the "Libraries for Developers" section: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android Mapbox also has Android implementations, not sure if you can sign up without a credit card though.
- EQmapbox 9y ago
  Definitely! CC not required for Mapbox account. Note - I work at Mapbox, on accounts
spectre256 9y ago
Hey 2dvisio, I'm an ex-Mapzen alum who runs https://geocode.earth https://geocode.earth. We don't have a permanent free tier at the moment (our geocoder is solid but the service is new!), but we want to find ways to contribute to the community where we can. I would be happy to set up a temporary free tier on our service for one of your classes. Shoot me an email, julian at geocode dot earth and we can figure something out
DomesticMouse 9y ago
Fwiw, there is a viable work around. Android (and iOS) usage of the Google Maps APIs remain free. See the Mobile Native Dynamic Maps line on our pricing sheet: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ You can construct API keys that are restricted to an Android signing key, use it for the duration of the class, and then revoke it after the course work is done.
- rhodysurf 9y ago
  Oh wow... why is this not mentioned higher? Big break for me that iOS and Android remain free

thecodemonkey 9y ago

I just wanted to add that geocod.io is now a viable alternative to Google Maps for geocoding in terms of both accuracy and pricing. We’re going to continue having a no-credit-card-required 2,500/day free limit, as well as the most affordable pricing, without restrictions. Including a plan that allows for unlimited geocoding. https://geocod.io/pricing https://geocod.io/pricing Full disclaimer: I’m one of the Geocodio founders.

bigsassy 9y ago
Just wanted to second this. I'm a current customer and have been pretty happy with the accuracy and quality of their data.

dskendall 9y ago

Wow, this is a massive price increase... free tier cut from 750,000 dynamic map loads per month to 56,571! With new prices it'd cost $4,023/mo to pay for what used to be free. Another way of putting it: used to get 25,000 free dynamic map loads per day, now only get 1,886 free map loads per day. 92% less for free. And this is assuming you use the full $200 credit only for the dynamic map loads and not partially for the other Google Maps APIs.

sleemanj 9y ago

Gah, this is so confusing, I've got small sites developed for clients many many years old running various maps based stuff off API Keys in my account, now I have to add MY billing information to them or get the client to set themselves up a google cloud platform account and developer and project and keys and ...... Good grief, that's totally impractical to have website administrators, my clients, to do that, even I as a seasoned developer hate trying to navigate around the complex labyrinth that is the Google developer console stuff. It's all so complicated. I just want a page I can point my customer to, "go here, type in your domain name, enter your credit card number in case you need to be billed by Google for usage, and tell me the API key it spits out". On top of that, it's still of course totally open to abuse and quota theft, referer checking is not security. I can see a burgeoning black market in api keys forming.

lukeqsee 9y ago
We support cases like this by using domain names as authentication. We plan to eventually support automatic spinning off of domains into their own account (e.g., for your clients after you're finished with a project). But for now, they could set up their own account with their domain and it would just work for you as a dev. If you're curious: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com. Please email me at luke@stadiamaps.com if you're interested.
n_u_l_l 9y ago
It is totally hidden but you don’t actually have to add a billing account if you’re sure that you stay below the $200 monthly usage. You can find it here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch... "Is a credit card or billing account required?" I also experienced similar issues when I was still freelancing and managed the hosting for some clients. I wanted to host clients on Google Cloud or AWS but letting clients make an account they are unable to manage looked like a bad idea to me. If their website gets a lot of unexpected (maybe unwanted) traffic, they get a large bill which they blame me for. Because of this reason I had to go with shared hosting for small clients, and Heroku for companies that cared about uptime so everyone always knew what the costs are. Something like billing limits would fix this. So freelancers could host their clients websites on their own account (or using AWS organizations) and charge their clients the billing limit for a year upfront.

zylepe 9y ago

I run https://onthegomap.com https://onthegomap.com which uses Google Maps API. Last month it cost about $500 (for direction requests). Under the new pricing model it will cost $30,000 per month: $2,500 for page views, $27,000 for direction requests, and $1,000 for elevation request. It makes $300-500 per month in ad revenue. Time to shut down?

tj89 9y ago
While not to your degree I'm in a similar position. They only gave us 30 days to figure all this out which is ridiculous. Where did you find your monthly API calls? I can't seem to get any numbers other than daily for the last week
- zylepe 9y ago
  https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/dashboard https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/dashboard - at first I thought I was in the clear, then I realized I had 1 day selected.
  - tj89 9y ago
    I don't think that's specific enough. For example all the places API calls are grouped together but there are 13 types at different prices. I don't see any way to figure out how much we'll be paying. For me looks like I went from basically free to $600/mo just for map views. I have no idea how much more I'll have to pay for API calls because they completely obfuscate the data. Now we have 30 days to figure out how to make the money work or find another solution. Pretty crappy of an API provider (let alone Google) to do this. At least now we know not to trust our apps / sites infrastructure to Google... they aren't the same "do no evil" company they used to be.
    - zylepe 9y ago
      I got pricing info from https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ and attempted to map existing api calls to the new names. What APIs do you use?

forrestthewoods 9y ago

Does anyone offer a competitive service that computes directions with time-of-day travel times? I built a tool awhile back to visualize commute ranges. It’d be nice to move this off Google Maps API. https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-378009330ffa https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-3...

Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
Graphhopper does this, based on TomTom data. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mapbox do something similar in the future.
Foremost 9y ago
The TomTom Routing API offers directions based on real-time and predictive traffic. You can check it out for free: https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing Note: I work for TomTom
EQmapbox 9y ago
Yep mapbox/driving-traffic profile of the Directions API factors in current and historic traffic conditions - https://www.mapbox.com/api-documentation/#directions https://www.mapbox.com/api-documentation/#directions. As my name suggests, I work for Mapbox :)
- forrestthewoods 9y ago
  Neat! 60 requests per minute is not very many. Sadly I’m not sure any service will be able to do what I want at an affordable rate. :(
  - EQmapbox 9y ago
    I'd love to make this work, Forrest - drop my name in a note to help@mapbox.com and let's see if we can get you setup with the Isochrone plugin (https://blog.mapbox.com/add-isochrones-to-your-next-application-e9e84a62345f https://blog.mapbox.com/add-isochrones-to-your-next-applicat...) which sits on top of the Mapbox Matrix API. https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-378009330ffa https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/visualizing-commute-times-3... is awesome!

mongol 9y ago

What is the simplest way to self host a map that will serve as bakgrund to WMS data in Leaflet? I need nothing fancy, can do without deep zoom. The usage is within an app so embedding in the app could be an option. I find the mapping landscape confusing.

forcer 9y ago

does anyone has experience with here.com ? I did not use yet but was engaged with the sales team (not great). it seems their pricing is quite comparable with mapbox. more here : https://developer.here.com/plans https://developer.here.com/plans

Foremost 9y ago
You should evaluate the TomTom offering too. https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api

petetnt 9y ago

With the new pricing I think anyone who has been paying any significant amount for Google Maps usage would be better served with MapBox. The free tier usage in GMaps was rather lenient, but with this pricing change I don't see many reasons to stick with Google Maps's subpar developer experience and performance (except for the extra churn required). Open source idea: Google Maps -> MapBox shim layer

fredley 9y ago

What fresh hell is this transition tool? It goes through a few weird, semi/non-styled authentication pages on a variety of domains (e.g. withgoogle.com). It uses non-standard animations that look broken. The whole things is a disaster that is clearly not finished. The whole thing smacks of 90-00's era Microsoft 'wizards'.

endijs 9y ago

If i did my math correctly, then in my situation 0$ converted to ~400$. Google gave 500$ free credit, which will run out in 1 month. Simplest way to optimize things will be to replace dynamic maps with static and remove StreetView. Then i should be ~200$ monthly limit. Which is not safe place to be. Edit: Actually 500$ will last for 3 months. As each month there are 200$ free. Thus if bill is 400$, then half if covered by the free tier and second half from credit.

Doctor_Fegg 9y ago

There's (justifiably) a lot of love for Mapbox in this thread as an alternative, but as remarked, their pricing isn't particularly cheap (why should it be, they sell on the quality of the product). So the other option is to self-host tools using OpenStreetMap data. Some pointers: * Raster tiled maps: the canonical instructions are at switch2osm.org; put it on commodity hardware such as Hetzner/OVH. * Vector maps: a lot of development in this area at the moment and you could happily lose yourself for days among all the emerging solutions, but probably the easiest out-of-the-box solution is openmaptiles.org. * Geocoding: Photon (https://github.com/komoot/photon https://github.com/komoot/photon) is the easiest to set up because it comes with precompiled indexes - no need to generate your own. Based on ElasticSearch, needs SSD for reasonable performance. * Routing: OSRM (Mapbox's routing engine) and Graphhopper are both self-hostable. OSRM is very RAM-hungry, but blazingly fast. This is just a start - there are many more options available, not least the whole stack developed by Mapzen before they shut down. The raw OSM data is downloadable from planet.openstreetmap.org (full dump) or http://download.geofabrik.de/ http://download.geofabrik.de/ (regional extracts). Worth noting as well that there are a few well-established and competitively priced indie providers based on OSM: Thunderforest (http://thunderforest.com/ http://thunderforest.com/), Geofabrik (http://geofabrik.de/ http://geofabrik.de/), Graphhopper (https://www.graphhopper.com/ https://www.graphhopper.com/).

lukeqsee 9y ago
We also do map tiles (based on OSM), static maps, and routing. We’re a new startup this year, and one of our goals is transparent and reasonable pricing. https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com
zylepe 9y ago
I recently did an evaluation of Valhalla, ORSM, and Graphhopper for routing based on openstreetmap data. Valhalla was nice in that it could preprocess and serve results with only a few GB of RAM, but it could only handle <1rps as the end was more than a few miles from the start since it doesn’t use contraction hierarchies. OSRM was super fast, especially for very short routes (>1k rps on a single core) but it requires 300+GB of RAM to preprocess the world and 64GB of RAM to serve direction requests which gets a bit too expensive for me. Graphhopper was nearly as fast as OSRM for short routes, but just as fast for longer routes. It can preprocess the world with only 64GB of RAM, and can serve direction requests happily on machine with only 16GB of RAM. I ended up going with Graphhopper, but still may need to shut down my site...

nomad543 9y ago

If you enter your credit card in the API Console, you are enabling Google to bill you for any other API you use which you were relying on the free quota, so be careful. Happened to me.

levashovbiz 9y ago

For those who are not in 98% that Google believe will not be affected, I combined a list of alternative to Google Maps API, with focus on geocoding - https://goo.gl/5GUVNd https://goo.gl/5GUVNd Not affiliated with any of the providers listed and mainly based on this thread, just added there pricing information, free tier limits and reference.

billysielu 9y ago

Couple of thoughts: 1. To avoid making a loss due to map costs, sites may have to create a source of revenue which scales in proportion to the amount of maps used. Advertising? Google Advertising? 2. It seems quite easy to attack someone by linking to their map content on social media. Loads of traffic = loads of cost. So sites may need to consider devising a 'mapping cost defense' of some sort.

IanCal 9y ago
I don't think 2 would work, we use static maps and they only work based on the site they're loaded from. They won't even work on our dev instance because I've not whitelisted the domain. Unless lots of people are going to your actual site, of course.
- elyobo 9y ago
  I have a project which runs a variety of sites for our network - currently ~900 different domains. Restricting keys by domain name is not really practical for us.
  - IanCal 9y ago
    A list of 900 isn't really a huge problem, is it? Do they share anything common (many x.mycompany.com)? You can use wildcards.
    - elyobo 9y ago
      Many do, but not all, and even then just wildcarding the common bits would leave it pretty much wide open. Maybe if they allowed regular expressions then it could be targeted reasonably closely, or if there was an API I could use to generate the keys then I could provision specific credentials for each site...

zenovision 9y ago

I just compared pricing for different providers and here are my results: Usage: 10000 requests / day Google Maps: (3600000 - (28000free * 12)) / 1000 * 7 = 22848 $ per year Yandex Maps: 360000 rubles or 5600$ per year, but much cheaper for higher volumes than 10000/day Mapbox: (3600000 - (50000free * 12)) / 1000 * 0.5 + (fix 500 * 12) = 7500 $ per year Bing Maps: No pricing on website, need to contact support

nomad543 9y ago
I've been researching alternatives and Mapfit offers 100,000 API requests a day for free. I haven't read the documentation but looks very promising.
- nomad543 9y ago
  Well a truly bizarre thing happened, the Mapfit staff just altered the text on their pricing box from 100,000/day to 2,500/day (Google cache confirms). Doesn't look very professional.
  - yurishimo 9y ago
    They’ve probably been getting hammered with signups. It sucks they pulled such an underhand move but it’s obvious why they did it.
Foremost 9y ago
Have you checked out TomTom and Here too?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cup-of-tea 9y ago

What they don't tell you is the underlying data is of extremely dubious quality. It's a hodgepodge of proprietary data, data automatically generated from satellite imagery and open government data from various sources all merged together in an automatic or at least thoroughly non-expert way. To a cartography geek it's an absolute nightmare.

yurishimo 9y ago
I think a lot of people are using the stylized Map views over the satellite views. I’m my experience, those are pretty good for showing where things are, maybe if not topographically accurate.
- Foremost 9y ago
  You've got a point. If it's just about showing things on a map, OSM will do. When it comes to routing or geocoding, you need quality, consistency and accuracy. And that is only offered by map makers like Here or TomTom. Both run their own Maps API platforms.

oeff 9y ago

I am searching for an alternative to google maps. I am using the places-API of google maps to evaluate the branche of a company. Often the google-places-API returns something like this: > "types" : [ "point_of_interest", "establishment" ] This is not exact enough. Is there a possibility to gain better information of a company by API? Thanks a lot.

kirchhoff 9y ago

I run https://www.instantstreetview.com https://www.instantstreetview.com which does 100,000+ 'map loads' per day. The price for these has effectively increased by a factor of 28 ($0.50 -> $14 per 1000), which is completely unsustainable ($1,400 daily!)

dazbradbury 9y ago
Will be extremely sad to see fun maps projects disappear as a result of this. We're also seeing a huge increase in cost (we are a paying user already) at https://www.openrent.co.uk/ https://www.openrent.co.uk/, but I kind of hoped commercial projects would be treated differently to non-commercial ones.
- kirchhoff 9y ago
  When I spoke to the sales team last year, they admitted they had no appropriate plan to suit small, but popular projects. They attempted to shoehorn me onto the premium plan but many aspects of it are geared toward larger entities - very steep initial cost (per map load) with discounts for huge volumes.
- rmc 9y ago
  OpenStreetMap is a volunteer, free data alternative
- lukeqsee 9y ago
  This is a shameless plug for my company, Stadia Maps. We started the company because of situations just like this. We'd be happy to talk about a much more reasonable cost. :) Please email if you're interested: luke@stadiamaps.com or take a look at our website https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
mapsmaps 9y ago
There are other pricing tiers that might significantly reduce that cost. Contact us here and we can help: contact@navagis.com

nomad543 9y ago

So I signed up to Mapbox, I wonder how the free tier works. I didn't enter any billing details, so what will happen if I reach the 50,000 calls within a month, will it stop working or will I be invoiced later for the calls over 50,000?

aligoes 9y ago
(I work at Mapbox) We'll keep your maps on and send you a note letting you know you're over the limit. At the end of your billing cycle we'll invoice you for anything you use beyond the limit and, once the invoice is out, you'll have a ten day grace period to add your card.

vlamingsjef 9y ago

For everyone thinking they are going to be billed for unwanted overuse. You can restrict API access and rate limit the requests.

thinkingemote 9y ago
Do you have any documentation for this claim? All I can see is that this is for those on Premium Plans only which is a "Contact Sales" only tier.

Jw777 9y ago

Something is not totally clear and will make a big difference. Prior to this with standard it was 25,000 free loads per day. Is this being dropped? It seems like it but I received an email saying based on my usage I would be within the $200 free credit limit.

ScribbleMaps 9y ago

I can provide some of you with free unlimited mapdata solutions for geocoding and base layer data with accreditation. I run my own OSM server instances. Hit support on ScribbleMaps.com and ask for Jonathan so the ticket is forwarded to me.

elyobo 9y ago

It seems like sticking a CDN in front of the static map API could be used to reduce costs quite a bit there as well, especially if you forced it to cache more aggressively than the cache control headers returned by Google indicate. Has anyone tried this?

elyobo 9y ago
Technically possible, but sadly prohibited by their T&Cs[1]. It's a bit annoying, if they wanted to charge per impression they should charge by impression rather than having per-api-call pricing but forcing you to call the API repeatedly for the same thing. [1] https://developers.google.com/maps/terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms see section 10.5.d

n_u_l_l 9y ago

Google can change their prices at any time, and they just proved that they do. There is some kind of trust I have/had in cloud providers to be fair when it comes down to vendor lock-in. One of the things I expect a cloud provider to do is not suddenly increase prices and instead give their clients a reasonable period (a year would be perfect, but I think 6 months is a reasonable period) so they can change their usage to minimize their new costs according to the new pricing or transfer to another provider if the costs are too high. But Google just proved that they don’t really care about their clients. If you made an app that heavily relied on the Google Maps API, and you spend $3K a month now, you just received a mail that your costs might be increasing to $60K a month and you might need to drop all your current projects/tasks to migrate the app to another service.

eruci 9y ago

There are alternatives. I'm building a price comparison chart for various providers here: https://geocode.xyz/pricing https://geocode.xyz/pricing

lemonlyman516 9y ago

Thanks for the shoutouts for Mapbox here. I'm Ali from Mapbox (ali@mapbox.com) hit me up if you have any questions.

elyobo 9y ago

Larger size (and higher resolution) static images are currently only available to paid up "premium" map subscribers; presumably this functionality will now become available to everyone, as we'll all have to be paid users (even if you don't end up paying anything because of the $200 in credit). Is there any confirmation of this anywhere? Larger sizes make switching to static maps more viable for us (one reason we switched _to_ the dynamic maps for some use cases in the first place).

justicezyx 9y ago

Finally!

akamaka 9y ago

> Beginning on June 11, 2018, you’ll need to enable billing with a credit card and have a valid API key for all projects. This will give you the ability to scale easily with less downtime and fewer performance issues. In addition, we’re simplifying our 18 individual APIs into three products: Maps, Routes, and Places. > Also, in June 2016 we announced that we would stop supporting keyless usage, meaning any request that doesn’t include an API key or Client ID. This will go into effect on June 11th, and keyless access will no longer be supported. At that time, keyless calls to the Maps JavaScript API and Street View API will return low-resolution maps watermarked with “for development purposes only.” Keyless calls to any of the following APIs will return an error: Maps Static API (including Static Street View), Directions API, Distance Matrix API, Geocoding API, Geolocation API, Places API, Roads API, and Time Zone API. https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/

canada_dry 9y ago
The only silver lining is that www.openstreetmap.org (OSM) will hopefully get more love. Since google admits that 98% of current users will continue to incur 0 cost this is simply a blatant way of getting a real name associated with their user data.
- jedberg 9y ago
  Why does everyone always assume the worst? > this is simply a blatant way of getting a real name associated with their user data Or maybe it's a way to control access to their systems in a more reasonable and auditable way, and prevent some abuse too.
  - tj89 9y ago
    don't forget they are raising their prices a ton as well
  - theDoug 9y ago
    Any service priced $free or not tied to a credit card tends to see people play at incredibly dumb levels of abuse. Within a month of Gmail going public I remember people already trying to string accounts together as a makeshift multi-GB FTP store. Disclosure: I work in Google Cloud, not on this

dumbfounder 9y ago

Wow, 10x price increase or more for just about everything.

haney 9y ago
Kind of hard to compare apples to apples, there was a pretty steep minimum on previous contracts, I'd imagine that high volume users could negotiate volume discounts beyond those listed. At least this way there's not a huge cliff between the free product and a contract for larger volumes.
resoluteteeth 9y ago
It would be nice if this leads to more interest in alternatives (OSM based systems including maplet). Previously, when google made the initial shift in this direction a few years ago, it seemed like there was a brief period when more people were considering alternatives, but since most people were able to continue using the free tier this tapered off pretty quickly.
- SahAssar 9y ago
  > OSM based systems including maplet You mean leaflet.js?
  - 0x0 9y ago
    Leaflet is a nice javascript library for slippy maps, but you still need to bring your own tileserver (OSM is not free to embed for anything beyond light usage I believe)
    - SahAssar 9y ago
      Yeah, I just had never heard of maplet, so I was unsure if that s/he really meant leaflet or maplet.
      - resoluteteeth 9y ago

paganel 9y ago

Not a native English speaker and also not that well versed when it comes to marketing talk, but what exactly does "$200 monthly free credit" mean? (from this page: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-changes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/user-guide/pricing-ch...). Do you get a sort of voucher with which you'll be able to use Google Maps services worth $200 each month? Will Google automatically start billing you once you surpass that quota? I'm in the dark here. Later edit: I've found the answer to my first question, as in yes, the "$200 monthly free credit" acts like a voucher, sort of: > Can I still use Google Maps Platform for free? Yes. Starting June 11, 2018, when you enable billing, you get $200 free usage every month for Maps, Routes, or Places. Based on the millions of users using our APIs today, around 98% of them can continue to use Google Maps Platform for free with this credit. Still don't know the details of how to set up things so that I'll never surpass that traffic quota of theirs. I'm part of that 98% they mention with a couple of small personal websites that aren't intended to bring any revenue, I'm not that hyped with giving Google my billing details. Later later edit: It seems that it's possible not to give them your billing details so that they'll automatically "degrade" your API calls once the traffic quota is reached without billing you. I guess that's the route I will take, it's the least amount of effort and seeing as my projects won't reach those quotas it also makes sense not to worry about API calls "degradation". > Is a credit card or billing account required? Even though your first $200 of monthly usage is free, all Google Cloud Platform services require a credit card and billing account, to cover any amount you spend over this free credit. If you are billed, we'll credit your account for the first $200 of monthly usage. If you choose not to add a billing account, there is a risk that if your usage exceeds $200 in a given month, your Maps API implementation will be degraded or other API requests will return an error. If your estimated usage will be above $200 a month and you don't have a credit or debit card to set up a billing account, a local Google Maps Partner may be able to help.

asdsa5325 9y ago
They don't charge you for the first $200 worth of service.
theDoug 9y ago
From a couple points below that mention, which I think answers both parts of your question: > your first $200 of monthly usage is free, and you can set usage caps to ensure you don’t go over this amount.

wnevets 9y ago

is the scrollbar for "See how it works" suppose to be broken?

enriK71 9y ago
works perfectly fine on my end
nik736 9y ago
Works for me. Safari on macOS. What's broken for you?
- wnevets 9y ago
  either i'm nuts or they just fixed it.
joemccall86 9y ago
I had to unblock google-developers.appspot.com from loading.

jefe_ 9y ago

Does anyone know why Amazon doesn't have a maps offering on AWS? I've heard their internal logistics GIS services are pretty advanced and it surprises me they don't have a GIS category on AWS to the point I'm convinced there must some very specific reason they've chosen not to implement. Companies like MapBox and Carto seem to be doing well, Microsoft and Google have map services, demand seems to exist. Additionally it seems they would find value in possessing a list of companies utilizing such services and be able to offer some interesting services. It's puzzling.

jillesvangurp 9y ago
They invested in and are partnering with Here for maps and navigation. Having worked there, providing global maps and navigation is a very non trivial thing to pull off; which is why there are only handful of companies doing their own maps. It took Apple and Google many years to stop depending on third party maps that they were licensing from Teleatlas (now owned by Tom Tom) and Navteq (now part of Here), which were at the time the only suppliers of maps and navigation world wide. Apple is still in the process of shifting away from Tom Tom I think. Ironically both got more serious about doing their own maps after Nokia bought Navteq. So, Amazon did the smart thing and simply partnered instead of reinventing that wheel so they could have a maps solution for their Android fork and not depend on Google Maps while still implementing the relevant APIs for app compatibility. Here is in fact using AWS so that ticks that box ... OSM is nice but entrenched in licensing issues that are preventing adoption by big corporations. That's the reason that you'll be hard pressed to find anything but niche products for navigation based on OSM. It's a great solution if you are not mixing your own data sources with what OSM provides but that is not an option for most commercial players and OSM licensing is all about preventing exactly that. Microsoft had OSM maps for a while on Bing but they couldn't do any fancy features based on their own data on top of it so it got scrapped.
Foremost 9y ago
Indeed, even Microsoft Azure launched their own Location Services as part of their cloud offering: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/location-based-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/location-based-se...
9y ago

kinard 9y ago

WOW, my costs are going to go from about $320 per month to $3,750 per month. Time to find a different solution! GULP!

tj89 9y ago
and you have 30 days to somehow make it work or switch. for an API service that's seems pretty irresponsible to it's users. You would think they'd give you a few months notice at minimum.
lukeqsee 9y ago
Shameless plug: https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com We do map tiles and static maps, along with basic routing.
spectre256 9y ago
Hey kinard, I'm an ex-Mapzen teammember, and we've set up a new, paid, geocoding service called https://geocode.earth https://geocode.earth. I suspect we can give you what you need around geocoding, especially autocomplete, for much less than Google. Feel free to request an invite or reach out to me personally.
sytelus 9y ago
This won't happen unless you have a huge traffic which usually should translate to revenues that can support it. There is nothing wrong with services that you use to generate profits but have to pay for. Services like maps with 99% coverage of the world takes enormous amount of efforts over many years of sweat by very talented team. I know of countries where government wasn't able to produce good maps for decades but Google was. Currently while I travel, I very heavily rely on Google Maps. It's a pretty amazing service and I have paid more for stupid Angry Bird.
- tj89 9y ago
  100 users hitting 10 pages a day = 1000 map loads a day. 1000 map loads a day * 30 days = 30000 map loads which is over the "free" amount. This assumes NO api calls at all, only map loads. This change will affect all apps that have any sort of actual user base. I think you may be underestimating the how quickly you can go through API calls even without many users. While I understand they want to make money, giving developers 30 days to now pay 40x what they paid before is ridiculous.

m-localhost 9y ago

I wish it would be easier for people to contribute to open source projects (like wiki voyage etc) than to Google Places. (it's a bit off topic and I like the Places API, but that's a huge amount of valuable data that contributors are submitting there for free)

reustle 9y ago
Agreed. I contribute to Google maps a lot and I've looked into contributing to open street maps but the options seemed pretty clunky. I recommend mapbox to all of my clients over Google maps.
- jakecopp 9y ago
  Just click the edit button on https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/, I find the interface quite nice. It's quite addictive! That being said, I don't know of a similarly easy to use editor on Android for simple things like adding opening hours or addresses.
  - mtmail 9y ago
    http://vespucci.io/ http://vespucci.io/ is active developed and pretty powerful. For simply adding opening hours or a phone number I use https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (iOS, Android).
    - m-localhost 9y ago
      I think maps.me is one of the few apps that are easy to use and contribute to OSM. Unfortunately there was some controversy, because maps got vandalized or filled with trivial/garbage data, because user didn't understand that their notes ended up in a public database.
  - rmc 9y ago
    StreetComplete is a very nice, targeted OSM editing app https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete

huevosabio 9y ago

Did they change the usage limits of the Distance Matrix API? Previously they limited to "Maximum of 25 origins and 25 destinations per server-side request", even if you were a premium package subscriber, which is quite restrictive...

jpdus 9y ago

> If you are currently using an API key, please read the email we sent you on May 1st, which provides a high-level estimate of whether your future bill will change. Did anyone actually get this mail? I am using a key and even got a receipt yesterday but did not get this mail about pricing changes (user from Germany). Edit: Wow. I am currently using Places Radarsearch for a side project which currently has a (generous) free limit of 150.000 calls per day. If I read the pricing table correctly, I am now getting 5000 calls per month on the free tier (which also has to suffice for all other maps API calls). That's a 900-fold reduction..

apex18 9y ago
If you were using the free tier of Places Nearby or Text Searches (aka radar) and staying just under the daily search limit, your previous yearly bill of $0 from Google will now be roughly: 1.7 million dollars
theduro 9y ago
I got one
sjm-lbm 9y ago
Just a data point, but I got one about a minute ago - as I was reading this thread. So, I suppose you still might get one - it seems clear that they didn't all go out on May 1st.
nik736 9y ago
Just got one.
dmortin 9y ago
The pricing/limit changes are very aggressive. It's hard to believe they don't affect 98% of current users according to them.
- puzzle 9y ago
  I suspect that's 98% of users in the literal sense, with a very long tail of them having very little traffic. It's not the same as 98% of user traffic, i.e. API requests. :-)

jasonHav 9y ago

As someone who's only every used Google Maps, can anyone suggest a solid alternative? Geocoding and directions would be the minimum I'd need - with solid data in Australia.

Foremost 9y ago
For professional maps, routing, places and traffic, you can try TomTom Maps (ndlr I work there). developer.tomtom.com Free evaluations and the pricing is pretty straightforward, no subscriptions, no limits, no ads.
pveugen 9y ago
Mapbox offers maps, geocoding, and directions, with solid coverage in Australia. https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/ https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/ Happy to answer any questions. Disclaimer: I work at Mapbox.
- buckhx 9y ago
  Does mapbox provide place details data yet? Last time I spoke w/ sales it was a planned feature, but not released.
  - pveugen 9y ago
    What kind of places details are you looking for? Depending on the geographic region, Mapbox has data for regions, cities, addresses, zipcodes, and points-of-interest (POI). This is the coverage per region: https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/#coverage https://www.mapbox.com/geocoding/#coverage
- puzzle 9y ago
  How long does it take for an edit to propagate from OSM to Mapbox's tiles? Average/worst case. I know this is a tough problem, so I don't envy you. :-)
  - mtmail 9y ago

0x0 9y ago

Wonder if lots of people will jump to OpenStreetMap without realizing their open tile servers aren't a free-for-all? https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/

rmc 9y ago
The osm.org tile servers are run by unpaid volunteers, on donated hosting. So yes, they won't let you do whatever you want. But with OSM you can self host and get the same as what's on osm.org
mgmtconsultant 9y ago
This will probably be a huge boost to Mapbox - they have great tech, are built on top of OSM, and have much better pricing
NKosmatos 9y ago
As you correctly state, their servers aren’t free and hammering them will incur a ban. On the other hand if you are a high profile user why not copy the free data from http://planet.openstreetmap.org http://planet.openstreetmap.org and have your own server? Or if this is technically difficult, you can find paid for services with OSM data (I guess if you go down this road, it’s like paying Google)
- lallysingh 9y ago
  There were easy to use docker images for serving your own, the last time I checked a few years ago.

plumeria 9y ago

One thing I like about AWS is that all services have a pricing section. I am interested in the routing service (https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/routes/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/routes/) but there is only a contact sales button, no public pricing info available.

Foremost 9y ago
You can also check out this routing service https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing https://developer.tomtom.com/online-routing It's affordable and uses live and predictive traffic
mkozlows 9y ago
https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ has pricing for routes.
- outside2344 9y ago
  Holy mother of god is that expensive. Check out Mapbox for a nice alternative.

eden123 9y ago

I find it very interesting that Google Maps has 1 billion Monthly Active Users compared to Facebook’s 2+ billion. Where is this huge difference coming from?

cup-of-tea 9y ago
People who use other maps or don't use maps at all? Nobody uses a mapping solution just because their friends use that mapping solution.
ballenf 9y ago
I lot of people never change their travel patterns. Then there are those who use Waze (I think these are kept separate even though owned by Google) or Apple Maps.
Skunkleton 9y ago
Probably from people that don't use maps all that often? Back before I lived in the bay area I rarely used maps simply because I didn't need them. The area was small enough that I just knew where everything was.
bhandziuk 9y ago
I'd guess that a lot of kids don't use maps that often. Which doesn't account for all the difference.
tybit 9y ago
In addition to the other good answers, there’s also the difference that for maps there are actually alternatives. E.g many people use Apple maps just because it is there by default on IOS.

jazoom 9y ago

If you're on mobile, I'll save you some time. There is no way to locate the pricing page. And yes, the navigation menu is completely empty. I was able to get on a desktop and find the pricing page. Here's a link: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

ravenstine 9y ago
What is "embed advanced"? A search turns up nothing. I'd hate to make a custom map style, embed a map with it, and suddenly be charged upwards of $14 per thousand calls. Seems pretty steep regardless of what it is. Mapbox doesn't charge that much for anything on a per-call basis.
robocat 9y ago
iOS11 added a "Desktop view" mode but I am not sure the feature is well known (Android has had the feature forever, so by mobile, you mean iOS I think). From memory, in Safari, tap share, then scroll across to desktop view. I don't have an iDevice with me at moment, but it should work.
- lathiat 9y ago
  Tap Share, then "Request Desktop Site" However I have found that it is quite unreliable at working. Not sure if it's just changing the viewport for CSS, or the user-agent, or what. But it frequently doesn't work.
  - ijanos 9y ago
    you can long-touch the refresh button for quick access
- jazoom 9y ago
  By "mobile" I mean Android. And since Android has many browsers "Desktop view" may or may not exist, and if it does exist and can mean many different things. I don't bother to use it because I never found it to work properly. I haven't tried for a couple of years, though.

samstave 9y ago

Ive always wondered why Google Maps hasnttaken that of a topological yellow pages - where you have a limited blurb that can appear on your location beacon if your a business and if I search for "thing near me" your location and blurb can pop on a users' map and if they click on you to go to you, think of it as an ad click to your location. Or is this already a thing? EDIT: This looks exactly like what they are doing with that little rating icon above the building...

maxerickson 9y ago
I think it's one of the things that was behind the big push for Google+. Facebook won, but at the time they hadn't quite yet become the default place for small businesses to do social media.

zenovision 9y ago

WOW that prices are absolutely insane. 0.17$ per 10 calls? Even prices from Oracle are now looks like peanuts.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

Mapbox has an excellent alternative map platform based largely but not entirely on OpenStreetMap data. Mapbox GL JS in particular is a joy to work with and extend. https://www.mapbox.com/ https://www.mapbox.com/ It's not free, but it's very easy to use and the pricing is roughly 1/10th of Google's when you get past the free tier: https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ Mapzen used to be an alternative but sadly they shut down. However many of their products live on in open source or paid-hosted alternatives. See https://www.nextzen.org/ https://www.nextzen.org/ for a start.

jakecopp 9y ago
Mapbox's maps look great, though I wish they had a generic product like Google Maps that I could use. Does any such general navigation app using Mapbox exist? Basically a vector OpenStreetMap with good search and routing.
- mtmail 9y ago
  https://www.mapquest.com/ https://www.mapquest.com/ uses Mapbox in the background. https://maps.mapcat.com/ https://maps.mapcat.com/ uses OpenStreetMap vector tiles. On mobile I use https://maps.me/download/ https://maps.me/download/ (free, offline use possible).
  - jakecopp 9y ago
    MapQuest feels a bit strange with the huge amount of advertising. I'd much rather pay.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  OsmAnd can do this. It's generally recommended as the OpenStreetMap app, but almost everyone uses it with offline maps. If you click past that and enable the built-in online tiles addon, you can have tiles. Search and navigation, I don't remember seeing it in recent versions but there are so many options, I'm almost certain it must be in there somewhere. Search for custom or online navigation provider in OsmAnd and you should be able to find it. As you see, it's not exactly built for this type of usage, but it is supported and the app is generally considered as the best alternative out there, so it might be worth a try!

synesso 9y ago

TallyGo is a startup offering a routing SDK for Android & iOS. The pricing is much more affordable and capability for app integration is strong. It has realtime traffic & advanced routing. (Disclaimer: I work as a developer at TallyGo) https://tallygo.com/ https://tallygo.com/

robryan 9y ago

I don’t know how competitive the pricing is, but it is interesting how the comments go when Google does try and charge a high price for something over simply monetizing via advertising. I wonder if the perception would be different if Google Maps were a standalone startup developing a world class mapping product. Where the common manta would be along the lines of double your pricing.

jakecopp 9y ago
I think the problem is users don't want to pay and have their data scrutinized for ads. It would be like if you paid Facebook and still had your data going to many third parties. I think Mapbox has a very different reputation for this reason (also they contribute back to OpenStreetMap).
- draeert 9y ago
  Google doesn't store user data when you use the paid version of maps. For example when you call places API on the premium plan nothing is ever stored on Google's side after the query is made and results returned.
  - sam_goody 9y ago
    Can you provide a link for that? When I used Google Apps for business (not overly cheap)they were using more of our data than we were. Of course, maps API might be different, but would love a source.

mnutt 9y ago

Having contacted Google Maps sales years ago, their salespeople were some of the worst I've ever encountered--rude, inconsistent aggressive pricing, and vaguely threatening. I avoid them at all costs, and as others mention, Mapbox is a great alternative.

rajacombinator 9y ago

Back when I was working on a map heavy app, Google Maps API seemed designed to discourage usage. Bad/opaque pricing, usage limits, assumption that Google robots will pull the plug with no warning. In fact all Google APIs seem to be this way - they are not really interested in enabling 3rd party apps through their APIs. Seems bizarre to me, because they could gobble up the businesses of companies like Mapbox overnight if they made an effort here.

elliotlarson 9y ago

Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm not seeing what the cost is for higher resolution maps. As I understand it, in addition to usage beyond what the free account allowed, a paid account used to also give you access to higher resolution map tiles and a higher zoom level via their API.

tj89 9y ago

So all those sites have 30 days to figure out something or start shelling out money? That's really short notice From what I can find the "dashboard" only shows the highly variable "per day" numbers so you can't even see how many calls you're doing per month... which is pretty shady For a company that touts "do no evil" they are going to hurt a lot of free websites and small businesses / projects with basically no notice.