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Ask HN: Cheapest Maps APIs

by agencies on 5/4/21, 12:28 AM with 20 comments

What are your go-to maps APIs for budget minded businesses? Where is there still room for improvement?

The Google price hike was a while ago but APIs continue to be too expensive for folks [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26991625#27003898

  • by dirkt on 5/4/21, 4:08 AM

    For your frontend: MapLibre GL [1] is the fork of Mapbox GL that's still open source, so you don't have to pay for each usage.

    For tile hosting: Openmaptiles [2], based on Openstreetmap data. Either pay them for out-of-the-box experience, or use their open-source code to set up your own server at whatever hosting for whatever price you prefer.

    [1] https://github.com/MapLibre/maplibre-gl-js

    [2] https://openmaptiles.org/

  • by billylo on 5/4/21, 12:11 PM

    If you are curious about which routing engines fit you better, try this https://superroute.evergreen-labs.com

    (I made it to for myself and later shared it with friends and others.)

  • by stadeschuldt on 5/4/21, 10:13 AM

    Here has a freemium tier (no credit card required) which gives you 250k transactions per month for free.

    https://developer.here.com/pricing

    Disclaimer: I work for here.

  • by phonon on 5/4/21, 4:28 AM

  • by nrdvana on 5/4/21, 3:28 AM

    Are you aware of OpenStreetMap.org ? They have an entire ecosystem of APIs and services and download-data-and-serve-it-yourself options.

  • by tristan123456 on 5/4/21, 6:32 AM

    Apple Maps is cheap - 250000 views per day are for free. You will have to create your own client JWTs afaik. Not sure about APIs.

  • by NetToolKit on 5/5/21, 5:31 PM

    We at NetToolKit offer map tiles (both vector and raster), geocoding, and for the US, we offer autocompletion: https://www.nettoolkit.com/geo/about

    $10 for 100,000 transactions (e.g. geocoding requests, tile sessions)

    We have a tool to compare geocoding results across different providers: https://www.nettoolkit.com/geo/demo

    We also have a JavaScript library (MapWrapper) that makes working with maps easier (including allowing you to easily switch among a few of the different tile providers).

    We welcome feedback!

  • by tapvt on 5/4/21, 3:29 AM

    With regards to what features?

    Map display? Geolocation? Routing?

    I am also curious.

  • by simfree on 5/4/21, 8:14 AM

    On this same tangent, does anyone know a cheap API for suggesting and validating addresses?

  • by vami on 5/4/21, 11:38 AM

  • by iudqnolq on 5/4/21, 9:38 PM

    If you're in the UK, take a look at the Ordnance Survey. Some data is open source, some very reasonably priced.

  • by taf2 on 5/4/21, 1:33 AM

    Checkout mapbox not sure if the pricing is better the but the api is easy to use and the pricing is pretty clear IMO