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Hi, Ed here, one of the founders of OpenCage. This comparison is a bit shallow to be honest, as it basically just looks at price. Of course price is important,

Hi, Ed here, one of the founders of OpenCage. This comparison is a bit shallow to be honest, as it basically just looks at price. Of course price is important, but as someone who has worked on geocoding for 10+ years and helped literally thousands of customers there are many more factors to consider depending on your needs. For example: quality (not generally, but versus your actual input data), terms & conditions of what you can do with the data, support, data enhancements (things like timezones, etc, etc), ease of use, documentation, terms of payment, and more. The only real answer to "which geocoding service is best" is "it depends". We have a comprehensive geocoding buyer's guide on our site: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-compare-and-test-geocoding-services https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-compare-and-test-geoc... Please get in touch if you need geocoding, hapyp to tell you if your needs are a good match for our service. Happy also to tell you if not.

_hl_ 1y ago
Hey, I’m acutely in the market (considering moving away from Google) 2 Qs: 1. How does OpenCage correctness/completeness compare to Google Maps API, especially in rural and industrial regions where you have addresses like “AcmeCo Industries, 234-XY Unit C, Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai”? I’d like to confidently query the most precise location that still matches/contains my query. 2. Do you support querying by business names? Google’s geocoding doesn’t return the business name in the result (that’s a separate API), but it does use business names to resolve queries.
- freyfogle 1y ago
  Hi, Great. The only real answer is you should sign up for a free trial (takes 2 min, requires just an email address) and test with your actual input data. Which language are you working in? We have SDKs for almost all (30+) and detailed tutorials for many: https://opencagedata.com/sdks https://opencagedata.com/sdks You can also test manually on our demo page: https://opencagedata.com/demo https://opencagedata.com/demo You can do a lot to help us by formatting the input data well: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-format-your-geocoding-query https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-format-your-geocoding... re: company names, it is a real challenge as they introduce a lot of noise. Please can you follow up by email with specific questions: support @ opencagedata.com I hope we have the chance to work with you
- anubis0505 1y ago
  Hi there, this is Sarthak from the Google maps Devrel team. I would love to understand what challenges you faced while using the APIs and what can we do better in the future. If you are interested to talk, please drop me a DM?
awongh 1y ago
The comparison page link is comprehensive, nice! To summarize the main point of roll-your-own vs. a pay-per-request api the main point seems to be updating with updated/new OSM data. In terms of comparing Google Maps vs. Open Cage vs. roll your own OSM / Nominatim what would you say are the main features that are different? (not dev time or infra stuff- just what's different about the request/result)
- freyfogle 1y ago
  There is a list here (vs. Google) https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-google-maps-geocoding https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-google-ma... though really the key difference is the fact that we use open data. Googles data is not open, this significatly restricts what you can do with the data. And here is a similar comparison versus running your own Nominatim https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-nominatim https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-nominatim Please let us know if anything is out of date or can be made more clear. Thanks.
  - awongh 1y ago
    Thanks! Is there a chance you guys will ever switch to a per-request pricing model?
    - freyfogle 1y ago
      well the pricing models are per request, but just in easy to understand buckets (small, medium, large). Our experience is most people prefer this as they know exactly what they will spend, there is never a surprising bill. That said we do have enterprise customers with other pricing models to meet their exact needs. Please get in touch if we can help you.
      - awongh 1y ago
        To be specific my use case is for a seasonal-based app. So I neither want to pay for 10 months where $45 is too large, or buy a pre-determined amount without auto-reload where it's possible to run out of requests if I'm not careful. I suppose you can't please everyone.

_hl_ 1y ago

Hey, I’m acutely in the market (considering moving away from Google) 2 Qs: 1. How does OpenCage correctness/completeness compare to Google Maps API, especially in rural and industrial regions where you have addresses like “AcmeCo Industries, 234-XY Unit C, Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai”? I’d like to confidently query the most precise location that still matches/contains my query. 2. Do you support querying by business names? Google’s geocoding doesn’t return the business name in the result (that’s a separate API), but it does use business names to resolve queries.

freyfogle 1y ago
Hi, Great. The only real answer is you should sign up for a free trial (takes 2 min, requires just an email address) and test with your actual input data. Which language are you working in? We have SDKs for almost all (30+) and detailed tutorials for many: https://opencagedata.com/sdks https://opencagedata.com/sdks You can also test manually on our demo page: https://opencagedata.com/demo https://opencagedata.com/demo You can do a lot to help us by formatting the input data well: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-format-your-geocoding-query https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-format-your-geocoding... re: company names, it is a real challenge as they introduce a lot of noise. Please can you follow up by email with specific questions: support @ opencagedata.com I hope we have the chance to work with you
anubis0505 1y ago
Hi there, this is Sarthak from the Google maps Devrel team. I would love to understand what challenges you faced while using the APIs and what can we do better in the future. If you are interested to talk, please drop me a DM?

awongh 1y ago

The comparison page link is comprehensive, nice! To summarize the main point of roll-your-own vs. a pay-per-request api the main point seems to be updating with updated/new OSM data. In terms of comparing Google Maps vs. Open Cage vs. roll your own OSM / Nominatim what would you say are the main features that are different? (not dev time or infra stuff- just what's different about the request/result)

freyfogle 1y ago
There is a list here (vs. Google) https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-google-maps-geocoding https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-google-ma... though really the key difference is the fact that we use open data. Googles data is not open, this significatly restricts what you can do with the data. And here is a similar comparison versus running your own Nominatim https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-nominatim https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-nominatim Please let us know if anything is out of date or can be made more clear. Thanks.
- awongh 1y ago
  Thanks! Is there a chance you guys will ever switch to a per-request pricing model?
  - freyfogle 1y ago
    well the pricing models are per request, but just in easy to understand buckets (small, medium, large). Our experience is most people prefer this as they know exactly what they will spend, there is never a surprising bill. That said we do have enterprise customers with other pricing models to meet their exact needs. Please get in touch if we can help you.
    - awongh 1y ago
      To be specific my use case is for a seasonal-based app. So I neither want to pay for 10 months where $45 is too large, or buy a pre-determined amount without auto-reload where it's possible to run out of requests if I'm not careful. I suppose you can't please everyone.