What does a map API actually cost?
Updated Nov 5, 2026
The price on the pricing page is rarely the bill. What matters is how a provider counts, what happens past the limit, and whether you're allowed to keep what you paid for.
Three ways map APIs charge
- Per 1,000 requests (Google, Mapbox): a free allowance, then a price per 1,000. Simple, but the bill grows with traffic and there's no ceiling unless you set one.
- Credits (Stadia Maps, Geoapify): each request costs some credits and plans include a monthly or daily budget. Different products cost very different amounts.
- Flat plans with caps (PinSharing): a fixed price for fixed monthly allowances per product. Past the cap, requests pause instead of being billed.
Three questions that decide the bill
- What happens at the limit? Overage billing, a soft limit or a hard stop.
- May you keep results? If you can't store a geocode or cache an image, you pay for it again every time it's shown.
- What does one page view cost? An interactive map loads many tiles; a static image is one request, and once stored, none.
Worked example: a listing site
20,000 new listings a month. Each gets one map image and one geocoded address, both stored with the listing.
| Provider | Monthly cost for the images and geocodes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PinSharing | $19 (Starter) | Both stored indefinitely; Starter covers 100,000 of each |
| Google Maps Platform | $70 | Images: 10,000 × $2.00 per 1,000 = $20. Geocodes: 10,000 × $5.00 per 1,000 = $50. Coordinates may be cached for 30 days, not kept. |
| Mapbox | $100 for the geocodes | Permanent Geocoding at $5.00 per 1,000. The images fit in the free allowance, but the terms restrict serving static images or cached map content in place of the API. |
| Stadia Maps | More than Professional ($250) includes | 20,000 cacheable static maps at 2,000 credits each is 40 million credits; Professional includes 25 million. |
Prices read from each provider's pricing page on Nov 5, 2026. Billing methods differ, so treat this as a starting point and run your own numbers.
For your own numbers, use the plan calculator.
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