Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Maps Platform

cloud.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 265 posts

Re: Google Maps Platform

#181

Post by zylepe »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #175
zylepe wrote: post #126

I run https://onthegomap.com which uses Google Maps API. Last month it cost about $500 (for direction requests). Under the new pricing model it will cost $30,000 per month: $2,500 for page views, $27,000 for direction requests, and $1,000 for elevation request. It makes $300-500 per month in ad revenue. Time to shut down?

You can host your own OSM-based mapping for a fraction of your current cost, or move to Mapbox or similar. Drop in on https://help.osm.org/ or the #osm IRC channel on OFTC if you need any help.

Thank you! I actually just migrated walking directions to self-hosted graphhopper instance which should cut about $25,000 from that estimate.

Now I’d just need to find a suitable replacement for map tiles, place search, elevation api, and rewrite the app.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#182

Post by nugget »

corny wrote: post #99
NelsonMinar wrote: post #71

Mapbox has an excellent alternative map platform based largely but not entirely on OpenStreetMap data. Mapbox GL JS in particular is a joy to work with and extend. https://www.mapbox.com/ It's not free, but it's very easy to use and the pricing is roughly 1/10th of Google's when you get past the free tier: https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/ Mapzen used to be an alternative but sadly they shut down. However many of their…

I'm in the process of comparing Mapbox with Google Maps Platform. The usage would be for large full-screen maps with lots of interaction. Comparing map loads/views is not apples to apples. Google counts a single map "load" similar to a page view [1]. The number of tiles loaded doesn't influence cost. With Mapbox, a map "view" is 4-15 tiles (depending on how they're styled) [2]. [1] https://developers.google.com/maps/…

Check out Mapfit (mapfit.com) as well - top notch team with a lot of interesting ideas, and similarly much better prices than Google.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#183

Post by jonatanheyman »

sytelus wrote: post #152
kinard wrote: post #12

WOW, my costs are going to go from about $320 per month to $3,750 per month. Time to find a different solution! GULP!

This won't happen unless you have a huge traffic which usually should translate to revenues that can support it. There is nothing wrong with services that you use to generate profits but have to pay for. Services like maps with 99% coverage of the world takes enormous amount of efforts over many years of sweat by very talented team. I know of countries where government wasn't able to produce good maps for decades but…

> This won't happen unless you have a huge traffic which usually should translate to revenues that can support it.

For a B2B product where every user/visitor pays a high fee, sure. However, for a consumer website that is either ad-supported, or where a small percentage of visitors pays a low fee, this is definitely not true. The new pricing is insanely expensive.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#184

Post by nomad543 »

If you enter your credit card in the API Console, you are enabling Google to bill you for any other API you use which you were relying on the free quota, so be careful. Happened to me.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#185

Post by levashovbiz »

For those who are not in 98% that Google believe will not be affected, I combined a list of alternative to Google Maps API, with focus on geocoding - https://goo.gl/5GUVNd

Not affiliated with any of the providers listed and mainly based on this thread, just added there pricing information, free tier limits and reference.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#186

Post by billysielu »

Couple of thoughts:

1. To avoid making a loss due to map costs, sites may have to create a source of revenue which scales in proportion to the amount of maps used. Advertising? Google Advertising?

2. It seems quite easy to attack someone by linking to their map content on social media. Loads of traffic = loads of cost. So sites may need to consider devising a 'mapping cost defense' of some sort.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#187

Post by IanCal »

billysielu wrote: post #186

Couple of thoughts: 1. To avoid making a loss due to map costs, sites may have to create a source of revenue which scales in proportion to the amount of maps used. Advertising? Google Advertising? 2. It seems quite easy to attack someone by linking to their map content on social media. Loads of traffic = loads of cost. So sites may need to consider devising a 'mapping cost defense' of some sort.

I don't think 2 would work, we use static maps and they only work based on the site they're loaded from. They won't even work on our dev instance because I've not whitelisted the domain.

Unless lots of people are going to your actual site, of course.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#188

Post by zenovision »

I just compared pricing for different providers and here are my results:

Usage: 10000 requests / day

Google Maps: (3600000 - (28000free * 12)) / 1000 * 7 = 22848 $ per year

Yandex Maps: 360000 rubles or 5600$ per year, but much cheaper for higher volumes than 10000/day

Mapbox: (3600000 - (50000free * 12)) / 1000 * 0.5 + (fix 500 * 12) = 7500 $ per year

Bing Maps: No pricing on website, need to contact support

Re: Google Maps Platform

#189

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

zylepe wrote: post #181
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can host your own OSM-based mapping for a fraction of your current cost, or move to Mapbox or similar. Drop in on https://help.osm.org/ or the #osm IRC channel on OFTC if you need any help.

Thank you! I actually just migrated walking directions to self-hosted graphhopper instance which should cut about $25,000 from that estimate. Now I’d just need to find a suitable replacement for map tiles, place search, elevation api, and rewrite the app.

Thunderforest is a great start for tiles. I'm not aware of a discrete elevation provider, though Graphhopper can be made elevation-aware, I believe. Place search is more difficult (if you're thinking POIs) and it might be worth investigating Foursquare etc.

Re: Google Maps Platform

#190

Post by lukeqsee »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #172

There's (justifiably) a lot of love for Mapbox in this thread as an alternative, but as remarked, their pricing isn't particularly cheap (why should it be, they sell on the quality of the product). So the other option is to self-host tools using OpenStreetMap data. Some pointers: * Raster tiled maps: the canonical instructions are at switch2osm.org; put it on commodity hardware such as Hetzner/OVH. * Vector maps: a l…

We also do map tiles (based on OSM), static maps, and routing.

We’re a new startup this year, and one of our goals is transparent and reasonable pricing.

https://stadiamaps.com

Post reply on HN