Migrate from the Google Maps Geocoding API

Why people move

Two reasons. Price: Google is $5 per 1,000 geocodes after the free monthly allowance; geocode.net is $0.50 after 10,000 a month. Terms: Google's platform terms limit how long you may cache geocoding results; our index is public-domain data and results are yours to keep indefinitely.

Request

Google	geocode.net
GET /maps/api/geocode/json?address=…&key=…	GET /v1/geocode?q=… with header X-API-Key: …
components=postal_code:20500	postal_code=20500 (also street, city, state)
latlng=38.89,-77.03	GET /v1/reverse?lat=38.89&lng=-77.03
one address per request	POST /v1/geocode/batch, up to 10,000

Response

Google	geocode.net
results[0].formatted_address	results[0].formatted
results[0].geometry.location.lat / lng	results[0].location.lat / lng
results[0].geometry.location_type (ROOFTOP, RANGE_INTERPOLATED, GEOMETRIC_CENTER, APPROXIMATE)	results[0].accuracy_type (rooftop, range_interpolation, nearest_rooftop_match, street_center, place, zip, county, state) plus a numeric accuracy
address_components[] with types	components object: number, street, suffix, city, county, state, zip
status: "ZERO_RESULTS"	HTTP 200 with an empty results array
status: "OVER_QUERY_LIMIT"	HTTP 429 with {"error": "rate_limited"}

Things Google does not return and we do in the same call: Census geographies, congressional and state legislative districts, school districts and the IANA time zone, via fields=.

Before and after

# Google
r = requests.get("https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json",
                 params={"address": addr, "key": GOOGLE_KEY}).json()
loc = r["results"][0]["geometry"]["location"]

# geocode.net
r = requests.get("https://api.geocode.net/v1/geocode", params={"q": addr},
                 headers={"X-API-Key": KEY}).json()
loc = r["results"][0]["location"]

What to watch

• Coverage is US only today. Keep Google for other countries, or route by country.
• nearest_rooftop_match and street_center have no Google equivalent; map them to your "approximate" bucket.
• Delete the cache-expiry job. There is nothing to expire.