Earlier today, the good folks at Google Maps Platform sent out a captivating mail to all users about the “All New & Exciting” changes – and captivate they did!
Google combined over 18 API’s into 3 major products. $200 monthly credit for every account and overhaul of pricing plans. The good news is that everything is simpler to manage (for Google). The bad news: it costs a bomb (For You).
*oogle execs before hitting the 'Send' on that email
The Ubers, AirBnBs and Lyfts will probably have to shell a little more pocket change, but all the small-to-medium scale businesses that depend on Google API’s will be adversely affected. We know this because at the time of writing; we’ve already received over 16 mails from developers/businesses trying to compare costs – and it’s only been 7 hours since that mail from Google. In short:
Ouch.
We started LocationIQ because there was a clear need for a simple, scalable & affordable geocoding service. To this end, we’ve keep our pricing fair and our agreements simple. Our infrastructure is built for scale; we currently serve over one billion requests each day. We also continue to offer the most generous free tier on the market.
Shameless Plug: We were ~10x more cost-effective than Google’s APIs yesterday. Today it’s 20x cheaper. 🙂
P.S: We currently offer Geocoding APIs and Map tiles for web, android and iOS.
A quick comparison
