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Do you know if OSM is any good at geocoding for US addresses? We're currently using Google, but we're often bumping into the 2,500/day ceiling, and the commerci

Do you know if OSM is any good at geocoding for US addresses? We're currently using Google, but we're often bumping into the 2,500/day ceiling, and the commercial license is $10k/year. We have looked at some alternatives such as geocod.io, but quality seems a bit lacking and they don't offer some features we need (but which we would surely be able to develop ourselves if we could use OSM as a primary database).

aldr 12y ago
Have you tried the mapquest open data api? http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/geocoding-service http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/geocoding-se...
- lobster_johnson 12y ago
  Unfortunately it does not return the bounds of the matched feature. We use this to determine if results are accurate enough, by measuring the area of the bounds; for example, if the match is a long road (not a numbered street address), it makes no sense to use the latlng because it's quite obviously too imprecise; but if the road is quite short (less than 100m, say), it's acceptable to us. It's such an obvious feature to provide a geocoding API that I don't know why only Google does it.
maxerickson 12y ago
It is not. Coverage is poor. At high zooms the main tiles at openstreetmap.org will show addresses, so you can go to a random place and see that there aren't any. Some areas are pretty complete (look at NYC), but there are many major cities with basically 0 addresses.
peteretep 12y ago
How accurate do you need? I have had great success in putting a proxy in place before your call out to Google to cache, remove addresses you don't think will geocode, and geocoding addresses you're happy with via free-sources first...
rmc 12y ago
OSM is just a data base. People have made geocoding that uses the OSM database. You can install it yourself (e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim ) or use a hosted version ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines ) The advantage of OSM, is that if it's not returning the right data, you can fix it, and import it into your own hosted version.
thecodemonkey 12y ago
Hey, I'm one of the Geocod.io founders. I'm very interested in hearing about the features you're looking for and discuss data quality. Feel free to reach out here or at hello@geocod.io
- lobster_johnson 12y ago
  I've actually been in email contact with you before, back in March. Grep your mailbox for "Wild Bunch Sundance Crook".

aldr 12y ago

Have you tried the mapquest open data api? http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/geocoding-service http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/geocoding-se...

lobster_johnson 12y ago
Unfortunately it does not return the bounds of the matched feature. We use this to determine if results are accurate enough, by measuring the area of the bounds; for example, if the match is a long road (not a numbered street address), it makes no sense to use the latlng because it's quite obviously too imprecise; but if the road is quite short (less than 100m, say), it's acceptable to us. It's such an obvious feature to provide a geocoding API that I don't know why only Google does it.

maxerickson 12y ago

It is not. Coverage is poor. At high zooms the main tiles at openstreetmap.org will show addresses, so you can go to a random place and see that there aren't any. Some areas are pretty complete (look at NYC), but there are many major cities with basically 0 addresses.

peteretep 12y ago

How accurate do you need? I have had great success in putting a proxy in place before your call out to Google to cache, remove addresses you don't think will geocode, and geocoding addresses you're happy with via free-sources first...

rmc 12y ago

OSM is just a data base. People have made geocoding that uses the OSM database. You can install it yourself (e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim ) or use a hosted version ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines ) The advantage of OSM, is that if it's not returning the right data, you can fix it, and import it into your own hosted version.

thecodemonkey 12y ago

Hey, I'm one of the Geocod.io founders. I'm very interested in hearing about the features you're looking for and discuss data quality. Feel free to reach out here or at hello@geocod.io

lobster_johnson 12y ago
I've actually been in email contact with you before, back in March. Grep your mailbox for "Wild Bunch Sundance Crook".