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Don't ever build anything large on top of Google Maps. Beyond the free tier and 200$ credit, prices are so insane that they would make Musk and that Reddit CEO
by dahwolf 3y ago
Don't ever build anything large on top of Google Maps.
Beyond the free tier and 200$ credit, prices are so insane that they would make Musk and that Reddit CEO blush. Have a look yourself:
https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/#pricing-grid https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/#pricing-grid
Hosting the simplest of maps (static map) cost 2$ per 1,000 requests. Imagine you integrate such a map into content. Even for smaller projects it's not uncommon to get traffic into the hundreds of thousands or even millions on a monthly basis. I'm talking page views, not unique visitors. That would set you back hundreds per month or even 1,000$. Just to show a bloody map. Actually, not a map. It's a static picture of a map.
Add some basic map interactivity, even just things like pins using the JavaScript API, and it becomes 7 times more expensive than that. I'm not kidding.
Say you make a map with pins showing current wildfires. Now consider this costing 14$ per every 1,000 requests. Do the math of your page gaining some basic popularity. 100,000 page hits? Not a big deal. That'll be 1,400$ please.
In most projects you want your map to be more useful. Add (reverse) geocoding, place details, etc. That's 3 APIs. Assuming equal usage, that's over 5,000$.
In one month. For a smallish audience. To enable fairly basic functionality. You can rent a goddamn Mercedes AMG for that kind of money.
- zh3 3y agoAlso it appears each reload is chargeable - so anyone who wants to make your life hard can trivially run up your bill (alternatively, pushes the cost and complexity of avoiding such attacks down to anyone trying to provide a service built on gmap).
- cornfutes 3y ago> You can rent a goddamn Mercedes AMG for that kind of money. Or you can have a webpage that serves useful information to 100,000 people.
- dahwolf 3y agoYou're missing the point entirely. It's not about the Mercedes. If anything, Google makes it impossible and unaffordable to serve up the useful information you desire.
- simfree 3y agoOr you could use a reasonable API like Mapbox and get better quality data for much, much cheaper. Google Maps data quality has been tailing off. I encounter missing roads that are on the county parcel viewer and in OpenStreetMaps yet Google couldn't be bothered to ingest this public data. These roads aren't new, you can go back and look at county GIS exports from a decade ago and the road is there in the exact same place.
- cornfutes 3y agoGoogle is still the king of points-of-interests and local businesses. Places that a tourist would actually care about. Mapbox would not even be within 1 or 2 order of magnitudes when it comes to this data.
- tomaskafka 3y agoYes, places where people spend money are the only map info Google cares about. Outside of cities and towns it's a joke.
- mycall 3y agoOr use OpenTripPlanner, OpenStreetMaps with Pelias or similar.