What is a good, unlimited alternative to Google Places API? [closed]

Question

For my project I've been relying on the Places API to search for POI's based on a desired query string and distance from a given point. As things are scaling up, however, I'm hitting the usage limits for Places really fast. Does anyone know of another API that doesn't have usage limits (or significantly more uses) that could substitute for the Places API?

Thanks

Quintilla

Answer 1

First up, I hope you know that you can bump your Places API quota from 1,000 queries/day up to 100,000 queries/day just by verifying your identity? This doesn't cost anything. And if even 100,000 QPD are not enough, you can purchase a Google Places API for Business license.

But to actually answer your question, I'm not aware of any alternative that's both good and unlimited. The main competitors with worldwide coverage are:

• Foursquare Venues, which is limited to 5,000 queries/hour. Here's a lengthy point-by-point comparison of the two.
• Factual's Global Places, limited to 10,000 queries/day.

Ideology

I love Foursquare, its free and 120k per day is pretty good limit (at least when starting of). The problem is, that it requires the users location to find places and whiles thats good for near by places, its NOT good for searching for places far away. So if your in the US and want to search for the Eiffel Tower - France, you will get no results :( – Hardened

I think Factual's Global Places is now paid only? – Chamkis

Google has revised their pricing for Places API. Now nothing is free. – Sideboard

@RahulTiwari Quite the opposite: basic data is now free & unlimited, and you get $200/mo in free credits for premium data. See developers.google.com/places/web-service/…. – Ideology

@jpatokal Yes you are right..thanks :) – Sideboard

@jpatokal "Basic is now free & unlimited" is not true. The basic data is included in all "Place requests" which start at $0.017 / request and it says so in the link you provided. – Germanophobe

@rdadkina Oops, you're right! Can't edit my comment anymore... but you can apply the free credit to those requests. – Ideology

Google maps api for places cost $30/1000 request. – Ecclesiasticism

Ridiculously expensive. If we are not allowed to store Google Places names, then the api is useless to me. – Marikomaril