There is no single best replacement for Google Places API. Choose TomTom for a documented autocomplete-to-place-details flow, Mapbox when search and map rendering belong together, HERE for address normalization and POI discovery, Amazon Location Service Places for AWS-native applications and explicit storage categories, or Geoapify for OSM-oriented projects and a documented free allowance. Compare providers with real queries from your target countries before migrating: the available documentation does not establish a universal winner for accuracy or latency.
Which Google Places API alternative fits your workload?
Start with the job the API must do, not the vendor name. An address-entry box, a nearby-business search and an application that stores place records have different requirements. Google’s own baseline uses pay-as-you-go billing by SKU or billable event, and Place Details, Nearby Search and Text Search use field masks. See Google Maps Platform pricing and Places usage and billing.
| Provider | Good fit when… | Documented capabilities relevant to Places | Pricing or storage note |
|---|---|---|---|
| TomTom | You need a conventional suggestions → selection → details workflow. | Search, geocoding, reverse geocoding and place-by-ID capabilities. TomTom explicitly recommends its Places Search API session model for a typical autocomplete flow. | Pricing is usage based; calculate the exact request mix from TomTom’s current terms. The cited guidance establishes the session model, not a cross-vendor cost winner. |
| Mapbox | Search, geocoding and customizable map rendering should use one platform. | Search Box suggestions and feature retrieval for addresses and POIs; forward geocoding converts text to coordinates. | Usage-based pricing; estimate search and map usage together on the current Mapbox pricing page. |
| HERE | Address normalization and POI discovery are central. | Geocoding for incomplete or partly incorrect addresses; discover/autosuggest, browse by category or name, and lookup by identifier. | Review current plan and usage terms for your intended endpoints; the cited capability documentation does not establish a comparable total price. |
| Amazon Location Service Places | Your application is AWS-native, or you need usage categories with explicit retention implications. | Geocoding, reverse geocoding, search text, nearby search, autocomplete and business details. | Pricing distinguishes Label, Core, Advanced and Stored buckets, which have different retention implications. The AWS pricing page lists free-tier request allowances during a stated introductory period. |
| Geoapify | You want an OSM-oriented option, especially for a smaller project. | Places searches by category, radius, city, reachability area and bounding box; geocoding, reverse geocoding and autocomplete are also documented. | Documentation describes credit pricing, up to 3,000 requests per day on the free plan, and one credit per 20 returned places. |
These are workload matches, not an accuracy ranking. Coverage, result quality and response time can vary by geography, query type and dataset freshness. None of the cited official pages provides a neutral, cross-vendor benchmark.
When is each alternative the strongest match?
TomTom: autocomplete through details
TomTom is the closest documented fit when your UI starts with suggestions as someone types, then fetches deeper results after a selection or search action. Its documentation specifically recommends the Places Search API session model for that sequence. That makes the session model a sensible first item to validate if your current application has a Google autocomplete-and-details interaction. It does not, by itself, prove that the same session behavior will cost less or return better matches for your users. Read TomTom’s API choice guidance and its Search API introduction.
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Mapbox: search plus maps
Mapbox is a natural candidate when search is part of a Mapbox mapping experience rather than a standalone lookup service. Its Search Box API offers suggestions and feature retrieval for both addresses and points of interest; forward geocoding handles text-to-coordinate conversion. Check whether the exact result types, countries and map behavior your product needs are available before changing providers. The Mapbox Search documentation describes the search APIs; use the pricing page for current usage costs.
HERE: address quality and POI discovery
HERE merits a trial where users enter partial, incomplete or partly incorrect addresses, or where the product needs to discover and browse places. Its documentation covers geocoding, autosuggest/discover, category- or name-based browse, and identifier lookup. Treat those as distinct operations in your design and cost estimate rather than assuming one endpoint replaces every Places call. See HERE geocode, HERE Geocoding and Search API v7 getting started and HERE browse.
Amazon Location Service Places: AWS systems and retention categories
AWS Places covers several familiar functions: geocoding, reverse geocoding, text and nearby search, autocomplete, and business details. Its pricing’s Label, Core, Advanced and Stored buckets matter if your application retains results: the categories have different retention implications. Determine which category applies to each endpoint and how your product uses or stores the returned data before designing a migration. Do not infer permission to retain a result merely because an API returns it. Start with Amazon Location Service Places and confirm current terms on AWS Location Service pricing.
Rank #2
Geoapify: OSM-oriented searches and a stated free plan
Geoapify’s Places API supports searches by category, radius, city, reachability area and bounding box. That can be useful when an application asks questions such as which matching places are nearby or within a selected area, rather than only resolving a typed address. Its documentation says the free plan includes up to 3,000 requests per day and that every 20 returned places cost one credit. Those figures are provider-published terms, not a claim that every query returns 20 places or that the free allowance is suitable for every workload. Check the current Places API documentation and geocoding documentation.
How do the alternatives compare on the details that affect a migration?
Autocomplete and session behavior
Write down the sequence your interface performs: keystrokes, suggestions, selection, details lookup, and any refinement. TomTom explicitly documents a session model for this common sequence. Mapbox documents suggestions and feature retrieval in Search Box. HERE documents autosuggest/discover. AWS documents autocomplete. Geoapify documents autocomplete. Those capability labels are not enough to establish identical session accounting or request semantics. Confirm how each provider treats a user session, abandoned suggestions, selection and subsequent detail retrieval, then implement the provider’s documented model rather than mechanically translating endpoint names.
Coverage, fields and freshness
Before migration, list the countries and the kinds of places your users search: street addresses, businesses, landmarks, or categories of POIs. Then define the fields the product actually displays or stores. The providers’ official documentation describes capabilities, but it does not provide a common, independently measured coverage, freshness or accuracy comparison. Test representative successful and difficult queries in every target geography, including misspellings and partial addresses where relevant. Compare results against your application requirements, not just whether an endpoint returns a result.
Rank #3
Storage and licensing
Retention is a product and compliance decision, not simply an implementation detail. AWS explicitly separates pricing buckets with different retention implications. For every candidate, check the current terms for caching, persistence, display and reuse of returned place data. If your system stores coordinates, names, addresses or identifiers, record which provider supplied each field and ensure the planned retention period and use are allowed under that provider’s terms. Do not assume that a migration makes previously retrieved Google data reusable under a new provider’s license.
Latency, limits and rendering
There is no documented universal latency winner. Measure the endpoints that will appear in the user’s critical path in the regions where your service runs, and review each provider’s current rate limits and retry guidance. If the API must work with your existing renderer, evaluate that integration separately: Mapbox is specifically a good candidate when customizable Mapbox rendering and search belong together, while the other listed capabilities should not be taken as proof of compatibility with a particular map SDK.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsWhat do the published prices and free allowances actually tell you?
Compare total cost for your request mix, not one headline rate. Include autocomplete interactions, selected-place details, nearby or text search, geocoding, reverse geocoding, map loads if applicable, and stored-data use. Google says its Maps Platform uses pay-as-you-go billing, with billing by SKU or billable event; its Places web-service guidance also describes field-mask requirements for Place Details, Nearby Search and Text Search.
| Published figure | What it covers and how to interpret it |
|---|---|
| Google subscription tiers: Starter, 50,000 combined calls/month at $100/month; Essentials, 100,000 at $275/month; Pro, 250,000 at $1,200/month. | Google’s pricing overview listed these figures on 2026-09-29. Google-published values that can change; verify the page and what counts as a combined call before budgeting. Google also documents pay-as-you-go pricing, so do not assume the subscription figure alone describes every billing choice. |
| Geoapify: up to 3,000 requests per day on the free plan; one credit per 20 returned places. | Provider-stated terms in the Places documentation. Confirm current plan conditions and how your particular query and result count map to credits. |
| AWS introductory free tier: 10,000 autocomplete/suggest requests and 20,000 Core geocode, reverse-geocode, search-text, search-nearby or get-place requests per month. | AWS pricing-page allowance during the stated introductory period. It is not a promise of a recurring free allowance indefinitely; verify eligibility, period and current terms on the pricing page. |
The figures above are not directly comparable: they describe different billing units, plan structures and time conditions. Mapbox pricing is usage based; the listed documentation does not establish a comparable fixed monthly allowance here. For HERE and TomTom, use their current pricing information for your specific endpoints rather than inferring a price from capability documentation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should you evaluate and migrate from Google Places?
- Inventory calls and fields. Break down production usage into autocomplete, selected-place details, text search, nearby search, geocoding, reverse geocoding and map rendering. Record which fields are requested and actually consumed. This matters because Google documents Places billing by SKU/billable event and field masks for Place Details, Nearby Search and Text Search.
- Define acceptance queries. Build a test set from real, representative inputs in each target country: complete and partial addresses, local spellings, common misspellings, business names and category queries. Include the cases that matter most to your users, not only easy examples.
- Map workflow semantics. For each alternative, document what the UI calls as the user types, after selection, and when fetching details. Validate session behavior where applicable, especially for the autocomplete-to-details interaction.
- Validate result usefulness. Compare whether the provider finds the intended place, whether the returned data contains the fields your interface needs, and whether the result is usable in your map or product flow. Keep the query, country and expected outcome with each test so a later API change is comparable.
- Check rights and retention before persisting. Review current terms and any provider-specific retention categories against your actual storage design. For AWS, account for the distinct Label, Core, Advanced and Stored pricing buckets and their retention implications.
- Estimate the real bill. Multiply expected usage for each call type by the relevant current pricing unit; include abandoned autocomplete sessions, maps and stored usage where those apply. Recheck free allowances and introductory periods rather than projecting them as permanent.
- Roll out behind a controlled boundary. Put provider calls behind an application service or adapter, normalize only fields your product needs, and retain enough logging to compare outcomes and diagnose failures. Run a limited comparison or staged rollout before removing the incumbent integration.
Provider documentation can tell you what endpoints exist and how billing is described; it cannot substitute for a representative test in your own markets. Use the same query set and scoring criteria across candidates, and record the date because pricing, quotas, API versions and availability can change.
A separate tool for screenshot capture
ScreenshotNeo is not a Google Places replacement: it is a website screenshot API and MCP server, so it does not provide place search, geocoding or autocomplete. It may be useful alongside a Places integration if your team also needs screenshots of web pages. ScreenshotNeo accepts a URL for PNG, JPEG, WebP or PDF output; its differentiators are clean captures that remove supported consent banners, newsletter popups and chat widgets, and billing that applies only to clean shots. It also offers MCP tools for AI agents. That makes it a separate tool for a different job, not one of the mapping/API candidates above.
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One-click scans. No signup required.
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For a web-page screenshot, a single GET request is enough. Keep your access key private; do not expose it in browser-side code. See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for request options and response details.
Best Value
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpPython:
import requests
r = requests.get("https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot", params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://stripe.com"}, timeout=90)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)Node.js:
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://stripe.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);- Cookie banners, newsletter popups and chat widgets are removed before the shot; each cleanup step can be turned off.
- Bot checks, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads and cache hits cost nothing; response headers say which page verdict applied and whether it was billed.
- An MCP server gives Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients the tools take_screenshot, get_page_info and capture_pdf.
- The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots.
Sign up for ScreenshotNeo’s free plan to try 1,000 screenshots a month with no card.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do any of these providers have a proven accuracy advantage over Google Places?
The cited documentation does not establish a neutral, cross-vendor accuracy winner. Test queries from your actual target geographies and use cases.
Can I keep storing the place data returned by a replacement API?
That depends on the provider’s current terms and the type of data. Review retention rules for the specific endpoints and intended use before storing results; AWS explicitly distinguishes usage categories with different retention implications.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
Is ScreenshotNeo another Google Places API alternative?
No. ScreenshotNeo captures web pages as images or PDFs; it does not provide place search, geocoding or autocomplete.
Quick Recap
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