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Introducing Mapricot: affordable maps, geocoding, and routing
As of today, Mapricot is open to everyone! It's the most affordable map and geocoding API, built on open data.
What it does
- Geocoding turns addresses into coordinates, suggests addresses as someone types, and finds the address at a point.
- Places finds what's near a point by category, with phone numbers, websites, and opening hours when the source has them.
- Routing finds driving, cycling, and walking routes through up to 20 stops, with turn-by-turn directions and isochrones.
- IP geolocation gives the approximate country, region, and city of an IP address.
- Map tiles are free vector tiles for MapLibre, in six styles.
Why I built it
Nearly all the map data you need is open and free to use, but providers like Google and Mapbox still charge steep prices to access it.
Google charges $5.00 per 1,000 requests to geocode, and wants a card on file before you make one. Mapbox charges for every map load after the first 50,000 a month, and extra to store your results. Other providers sell monthly plans, so you pay a flat rate whether you use the requests or not.
So I built Mapricot to be the location API I wanted as a developer:
- Your first 250,000 requests every 30 days are free. Plenty for a side project, and you don't need a card to sign up.
- After that, you pay as you go: $0.10 per 1,000 requests at any volume. That's 2% of what Google charges to geocode.
- There are no plans or monthly minimums. Everything is pay as you go, with credits lasting a year after purchase.
- Map tiles are free, with no meter, so you never pay for map loads.
- You can store your results at no extra cost and show them on any map, with attribution.
None of this would exist without the people who map the world, publish open data, and write open source software. I hope Mapricot makes their work easier to build on, and that a lot more great maps come of it.
Learn more
Getting started takes you from signing up to your first request, and the docs cover every API and the official SDKs for JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Go.
Sign up at app.mapricot.com to grab a key and give it a try. If something's missing or broken, I'd love to hear about it at support@mapricot.com.