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Ask HN: Google Places API is expensive – what is your spend, or alternatives?

8 points by me_me_mu_mu ↗ HN
I'm using Google Places API, and the pricing is quite extravagant. Granted, it seems to have much better (accurate, relevant) results compared to TomTom's API.

For those who are using it: How much do you spend?

For those who switched to something else: What do you use now, and what are your thoughts on it?

5 comments

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freyfogle
Agree!

For Maps have a look at: https://www.thunderforest.com https://stadiamaps.com

For geocoding, you can check out my business: https://opencagedata.com

We provide a worldwide geocoding API based on open data like OpenStreetMap.

Here's how we compare with Google https://opencagedata.com/reducing-your-google-geocoding-cost...

Of course happy to answer any questions you have.

me_me_mu_mu
Thanks! I just checked out opencagedata and saw that the reverse geocoding gives me some out of date records. It worked for a few of my tests, but the rest were not as accurate.

I'm getting the latlng from Google poi marker (using google maps mobile sdks), and requested that position in your online demo. Unfortunately the result doesn't match with what's on the map :(

However, I think I can definitely check out opencagedata for some other use cases which do not require that level of precision.

Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with places? With the google maps sdk, I can get a placeID, name, and position. However, the name is usually wonky and requires me to hit the places details API to get the correct name and address. I tried by passing the position to opencagedata reverse geocode, but the results don't match the POI/details.

Thank you

freyfogle
Happy to look into specific cases if you share the details: https://opencagedata.com/contact

re: Places - to my knowledge no one has a product equivalent to Google's in terms of size and freshness of the database. Sorry.

camhenlin
I was able to migrate my last team to HERE maps which gave the majority of what you have in the google places API with a similar interface for approximately a 75% reduction in costs.
bergash
I'm developing out our Places API at SafeGraph. Largely have feature parity (plus some additional features) w/ Google, although we're always building. Happy to answer any questions https://shop.safegraph.com/api/