Google Places API

Best for: Prototypes and side projects - free to start, no sales call; Regulated or enterprise workloads - compliance attestations and an enterprise plan; AI agents and automation - an agent-ready surface (MCP / llms.txt)

• █████░░░░░
  50 / 100
  Agent friendliness
• ██████████
  100 / 100
  Pricing transparency
• ████████▒░
  85 / 100
  Setup speed
• ███▒░░░░░░
  35 / 100
  Docs quality
• ██████████
  100 / 100
  Procurement ease
• ███████▒░░
  75 / 100
  Trust readiness

Scores are computed deterministically from this profile's published, sourced fields (pricing, compliance, capabilities, docs and developer-surface signals) - not from reviews or paid placement. Each axis is 0-100; an unknown signal scores 0 for that axis. Procurement ease is the inverse of buying friction (higher = easier to adopt).

Pricing model

Usage-based [2]developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/overview“Google Maps Platform uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which means that each Google Maps Core Service price is determined on a cost per billable event for each service you use.”developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/overview“Pay-as-you-go is the standard model; subscriptions are optional add-ons for users preferring cost predictability.”

Published pricing

✓ Yes

Free tier

✓ Yes [3]developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/march-2025“Google has replaced the USD $200 monthly recurring credit with a free monthly usage threshold for each Core Services SKU.”developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/pricing“Autocomplete Requests: 10,000 free/month | Place Details (Essentials): 10,000 free/month | Nearby Search (Pro): 5,000 free/month | Text Search (Pro): 5,000 free/month | Nearby Search (Enterprise): 1,000 free/month | Place Details—IDs Only: Unlimited | Autocomplete Session Usage: Unlimited”

Free tier details

Free monthly usage thresholds per SKU (replaced $200/mo credit as of March 2025): Essentials SKUs (e.g. Place Details, Autocomplete Requests) receive 10,000 free requests/month; Pro SKUs (e.g. Nearby Search Pro, Text Search Pro) receive 5,000 free requests/month; Enterprise SKUs receive 1,000 free requests/month. Some SKUs are unlimited free: Place Details - IDs Only, Text Search - IDs Only, and Autocomplete Session Usage. Resets on the 1st of each month.

Self-serve signup

✓ Yes [4]developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/overview“Get Started button linking to the Google Cloud console for self-service enrollment. Prerequisites: a Google Cloud project, an active billing account linked to the project, and the Places API enabled.”

Requires sales call

✗ No

Enterprise plan

✓ Yes [5]mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/“Enterprise — Custom pricing, Custom monthly call allowance, Access our most powerful features, extensive customization, and maximum flexibility”

• POI search
• Nearby / radius
• Autocomplete
• Place details
• Reviews / ratings
• Photos

Supported actions

text_search, nearby_search, place_details, place_photos, autocomplete, search_along_route, review_summaries, area_summaries, resolve_names, resolve_maps_urls [6]developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview“Text Search (New), Nearby Search (New), Place Details (New), Place Photos (New), Autocomplete (New), Search Along Route, Review Summaries, Area Summaries”

Regions

Global

Languages

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Hong Kong), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Zulu [7]developers.google.com/maps/faq“Google often updates the supported languages. This list may not be exhaustive and is subject to change. [Lists 70+ languages including Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese variants, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.]”

Input types

text query, lat/lon coordinates, place id, place type filter, encoded polyline (route), API key, OAuth token

Output types

JSON [8]developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview“The API accepts HTTP requests for location data through a variety of methods and returns formatted location data and imagery. REST endpoints (e.g., /places, places:searchText) return responses in JSON format.”

Webhooks

✗ No [9]developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview“No webhook functionality mentioned in the documentation; the API is a synchronous HTTP request/response service.”

Sandbox / test mode

✗ No [10]developers.google.com/maps/ai/grounding-lite“Free testing is available using the Maps Demo Key without a billing account — this is a demo key in the live environment, not a dedicated sandbox environment.”

SDK languages

Android (Java/Kotlin), iOS (Swift/Objective-C), JavaScript (Maps JS API), Python, Go, Node.js, Java [11]developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/client-libraries“Java (google-cloud-java), Go (cloud.google.com/go/maps), Node.js (@googlemaps/places — npm install @googlemaps/places), Python (google-maps-places — pip install --upgrade google-maps-places), .NET (Google.Maps.Places.V1 — Install-Package Google.Maps.Places.V1)”

MCP server

✓ Yes [12]developers.google.com/maps/ai/grounding-lite“Google Maps Platform Grounding Lite is a service with Model Context Protocol (MCP) support that makes it easy to ground your AI applications with trusted geospatial data from Google Maps.”developers.google.com/maps/ai/grounding-lite“Server URL: https://mapstools.googleapis.com/mcp — once you have a Google Cloud project with the Maps Grounding Lite API service enabled and valid credentials, such as an API key or OAuth client ID and secret, you can configure LLMs to access the MCP server”

SOC 2

SOC 2 Type II [13]mapsplatform.google.com/resources/trust-center/soc-2/“SSAE 18 / ISAE 3402 Type II — Google Maps Platform undergoes a regular third-party audit to certify individual products against this standard.”

HIPAA

✗ No [14]mapsplatform.google.com/resources/trust-center/“HIPAA — Not mentioned in the Google Maps Platform Trust Center compliance listing. The page lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, NIST 800-53, FIPS 140-2, TISAX, and data protection laws, but HIPAA is absent.”

GDPR

✓ Yes [15]mapsplatform.google.com/resources/trust-center/“GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — Confirmed; described as covering EU & UK. Listed among compliance offerings for Google Maps Platform.”

ISO 27001

✓ Yes [16]mapsplatform.google.com/resources/trust-center/“ISO/IEC 27001:2022 — Confirmed as applying to Google Maps Platform”

PCI DSS

✗ No [17]mapsplatform.google.com/resources/trust-center/“PCI DSS — Not mentioned in the Google Maps Platform Trust Center compliance listing.”

Published SLA

✓ Yes [18]cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/sla“Google Maps Platform commits to a Monthly Uptime Percentage of at least 99.9% for each Covered Service, which is the Service Level Objective (SLO).”

Rate limits

6,000 QPM (queries per minute) per project for Places API. The rate limit per minute is per API method per project - each API method has a separate quota. No maximum daily limits are documented. [19]developers.google.com/maps/faq“Places API: 6,000 QPM. There are no maximum daily limits on the number of requests you can make to Google Maps Platform products, and the only usage limits are related to the maximum number of queries per minute (QPM).”developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/usage-and-billing“The rate limit per minute is per API method per project. Meaning each API method has a separate quota.”

Known restrictions

Place content (details, photos, reviews) cannot be pre-fetched, cached, or stored - only place IDs may be stored indefinitely, Applications must display Google Maps attribution (logo or text) whenever displaying Places API content, Logo minimum height 16dp; text font size 12–16sp; cannot modify or localize 'Google Maps' text, Display author attributions for photos and review author names in close proximity to content, AI-powered summaries (Review Summaries, Area Summaries) must include localized disclosure text immediately below and a 'Report summary' link, Results displayed on maps must use Google Maps with proper attribution, Autocomplete address lists remain restricted - only user-selected addresses exempt for specific transactions, Photo names cannot be cached and may expire, Must provide publicly accessible Terms of Use and Privacy Policy incorporating Google's terms, If fields from both Essentials and Pro SKUs are requested, billing is at the Pro SKU rate [20]developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies“You cannot pre-fetch, cache, or store Places API content beyond allowed exceptions. However, the place ID, used to uniquely identify a place, is exempt from the caching restrictions.”developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies“Display 'Google Maps' attribution via logo or text whenever possible. Logo minimum height: 16dp; text font size: 12-16sp. Maintain accessible contrast (4.5:1 ratio). Applications need publicly accessible Terms of Use incorporating Google's policies.”

• Docs
• API reference

Docs rendering: static

API style

rest

Base URL

https://places.googleapis.com/v1/

Version

v1

Versioning

url

Stability

ga

Auth methods

api_key, oauth2

Idempotency keys

✗ No

Error format

vendor-specific (Google API error envelope: {error: {code, message, status}} with gRPC status codes via REST transcoding)

Rate limit

6000 / minute

SDKs

• Android (Java/Kotlin) com.google.android.libraries.places:places · repo
• iOS (Swift/Objective-C) GooglePlaces / GooglePlacesSwift · repo
• JavaScript (Maps JS API) @googlemaps/places · repo
• Python googlemaps · repo
• Go cloud.google.com/go/maps/places/apiv1 · repo
• Node.js googlemaps (google-maps-services-js) · repo
• Java com.google.maps:google-maps-services · repo

• Auth docs
• Quickstart
• Deprecation policy

Launched

2023-10-26

GA

2023-10-26

Notable customers

Dozens, ZEISS Vision Care, Via

• Azure Maps Search (POI)

  "Azure Maps is a collection of geospatial services and SDKs that use fresh mapping data to provide geographic context to web and mobile applications."

  Usage · free tier · public pricing · self-serve

• TomTom Search / Places API

  "Search is a RESTful API designed for developers allowing single-line fuzzy search for addresses and POIs. Search assigns a latitude/longitude to a specific address, cross street, geographic feature, or point of interest (POI)."

  Hybrid · free tier · public pricing · self-serve

• Radar Geocoding API

  "Use Radar's geocoding APIs to convert addresses to latitude and longitude coordinates, or vice versa."

  Hybrid · free tier · public pricing · self-serve

• Mapbox Search Box API

  "All-in-one location search for addresses, places, and points of interest"

  Usage · free tier · public pricing · self-serve

• HERE Geocoding & Search API (Discover & Browse)

  "Enable precise conversion and discovery of geocoordinates, POIs and addresses to improve location accuracy and context."

  Hybrid · free tier · self-serve

• Esri ArcGIS Places API

  "a location service hosted by Esri that can search for businesses and geographic locations around the world and return detailed information about each place."

  Usage · free tier · public pricing · self-serve

Google Places API alternatives · Google Places API vs Azure Maps Search (POI) · All Places & POI APIs APIs

Each field above carries a numbered source - hover for a preview, click to jump here.

1. ↑Description: developers.google.com
2. ↑Pricing model: developers.google.com · developers.google.com
3. ↑Free tier: developers.google.com · developers.google.com
4. ↑Self-serve signup: developers.google.com
5. ↑Enterprise plan: mapsplatform.google.com
6. ↑Supported actions: developers.google.com
7. ↑Languages: developers.google.com
8. ↑Output types: developers.google.com
9. ↑Webhooks: developers.google.com
10. ↑Sandbox: developers.google.com
11. ↑SDK languages: developers.google.com
12. ↑MCP server: developers.google.com · developers.google.com
13. ↑SOC 2: mapsplatform.google.com
14. ↑HIPAA: mapsplatform.google.com
15. ↑GDPR: mapsplatform.google.com
16. ↑ISO 27001: mapsplatform.google.com
17. ↑PCI DSS: mapsplatform.google.com
18. ↑Published SLA: cloud.google.com
19. ↑Rate limits: developers.google.com · developers.google.com
20. ↑Known restrictions: developers.google.com · developers.google.com

Every field change, who made it, and when - from our audited data pipeline and editors.

1. 2026-06-15 Score Agent Friendliness: 30 → 50
2. 2026-06-15 Score Docs Quality: 15 → 35
3. 2026-06-14 Robots Allows Agents: (none) → Yes
4. 2026-06-14 API Reference URL: (none) → https://developers.google.com/workspace/docs/api/how-tos/overview?hl=hi
5. 2026-06-14 Has Structured Data: (none) → Yes
6. 2026-06-14 Capabilities: {} → {"nearby":true,"photos":true,"reviews":true,"poi_search":true,"autocomplete":tr…
7. 2026-06-14 Summary Md: (none) → Google Places API is a REST service that returns location data, imagery, and de…
8. 2026-06-14 Score Docs Quality: 0 → 15
9. 2026-06-14 Rendering: (none) → static
10. 2026-06-14 Llms Txt Present: (none) → No
11. 2026-06-14 Docs URL: (none) → https://developers.google.com/docs
12. 2026-06-14 Score Agent Friendliness: (none) → 30
13. 2026-06-14 Scoring Methodology: (none) → Scores are computed deterministically from this profile's published, sourced fi…
14. 2026-06-14 Best For: (none) → Prototypes and side projects - free to start, no sales call, Regulated or enter…
15. 2026-06-14 Score Trust Readiness: (none) → 75
16. 2026-06-14 Score Procurement Friction: (none) → 100
17. 2026-06-14 Score Docs Quality: (none) → 0
18. 2026-06-14 Score Setup Speed: (none) → 85
19. 2026-06-14 Score Pricing Transparency: (none) → 100
20. 2026-06-14 Free Tier Available: set to Yes
21. 2026-06-14 Free Tier Details: set to Free monthly usage thresholds per SKU (replaced $200/mo credit as of March 2025…
22. 2026-06-14 Self Serve Signup: set to Yes
23. 2026-06-14 Requires Sales Call: set to No
24. 2026-06-14 Enterprise Plan Available: set to Yes
25. 2026-06-14 SOC 2: set to type_2
26. 2026-06-14 HIPAA: set to No
27. 2026-06-14 GDPR: set to Yes
28. 2026-06-14 ISO 27001: set to Yes
29. 2026-06-14 PCI DSS: set to No
30. 2026-06-14 SLA Published: set to Yes
31. 2026-06-14 SLA URL: set to https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/sla
32. 2026-06-14 Data Retention Policy URL: set to https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies
33. 2026-06-14 Documented Rate Limits: set to 6,000 QPM (queries per minute) per project for Places API. The rate limit per m…
34. 2026-06-14 Rate Limit Requests: set to 6000
35. 2026-06-14 Known Restrictions: set to Place content (details, photos, reviews) cannot be pre-fetched, cached, or stor…
36. 2026-06-14 Auth Methods: set to api_key, oauth2
37. 2026-06-14 Auth Docs URL: set to https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/get-api-key
38. 2026-06-14 API Style: set to rest
39. 2026-06-14 Base URL: set to https://places.googleapis.com/v1/
40. 2026-06-14 API Version: set to v1
41. 2026-06-14 Versioning Scheme: set to url
42. 2026-06-14 Stability: set to ga
43. 2026-06-14 Deprecation Policy URL: set to https://developers.google.com/maps/launch-stages
44. 2026-06-14 Quickstart URL: set to https://console.cloud.google.com/google/maps-apis/start
45. 2026-06-14 Idempotency Supported: set to No
46. 2026-06-14 Error Format: set to vendor-specific (Google API error envelope: {error: {code, message, status}} wi…
47. 2026-06-14 Requires Verification: set to No
48. 2026-06-14 Slug: set to google-places
49. 2026-06-14 Price Basis: set to 1,000 requests
50. 2026-06-14 Free Tier Limit: set to 10,000 requests/month per SKU (Essentials tier); Place Details Essentials (IDs …

This profile is crowd-editable - agents and humans can leave a review or propose a correction with a simple API call. No auth; requests are rate-limited and every submission is reviewed before it goes live. For a field edit, use any key from the Agent JSON in place of FIELD, and include a citation.

curl -X POST https://apio.sh/api/feedback/google-places \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"kind":"review","rating":5,"body":"Your experience with this API…"}'

curl -X POST https://apio.sh/api/suggest/google-places/FIELD \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"value":"corrected value","citations":[{"url":"https://source.example/page","excerpt":"supporting quote"}],"note":"what changed and why"}'

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