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

Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

protomaps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 118 posts

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#31

Post by bdon »

einpoklum wrote: post #23

Can someone give a better description of how this initiative relates to OpenStreetMaps? The website says that the "tile dataset [is] based on OpenStreetMap data" - so, what's the added value in the commercial tier? And - how, if at all, does this initiative contribute back to OSM as a project?

Hi, the value add in the commercial offering on top of raw OSM is described here:

https://protomaps.com/docs/faq#openstreetmap

I also maintain open source tooling for anyone to replicate and extract OSM on-demand, as well as a free download portal:

https://github.com/protomaps/OSMExpress

https://app.protomaps.com/downloads

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#34

Post by anthk »

867-5309 wrote: post #25

firstly let's predict when osm will become as universally acceptable as gm

OSM needs no data plan, just the GPS signal and updated maps downloaded from either Organic Maps (the easy way); or OSMand, if you plan to do serious tasks on mapping your town for instace.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#35

Post by kaapipo »

honeybadger1 wrote: post #33

I have tried to love the 3rd party maps, but I always go back to Google because of traffic updates. Nothing else comes even remotely close and when you need to get somewhere on time, it's just too crucial.

This is an API, not a user-facing application.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#36

Post by bjelkeman-again »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #29
gniv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $350 versus $0.50! It's not as impressive as you make it sound. The real value of the Maps API is in 1) routing and 2) local business details. These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. The price for the tiles is just an extension to the overall pricing.

> These are both hard for anybody else to provide, so Google prices them accordingly. I used to provide data to Google, mark missing postboxes, etc. Then I realised I am just helping them make money. Also they used to be quick, and got sloppy - 7 years ago my submission would get processed in 1 week. Recently i submitted nearby postbox, with GPS coordinates and pictures - 6 months, no responce. This is lile with soci…

Better spend that time on Open Street Map then.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#37

Post by dachryn »

pirsquare wrote: post #18

Google Map 10X their price on a single price change. Never trust Google Cloud or run any production servers with them. They have zero empathy for you. Just today, we got screwed by Google Cloud (as a 4 yrs customer) when they abruptly shutdown our production servers just because we didn't fill up a form on-time. My story: https://twitter.com/Ryan_Liao/status/1634103410525077504 (happens today) [Link Updated]

a 400 month customer is really a tiny fish, don't expect special treatment without support packages. Do you even have an enterprise contract with them? The bronze contract can be had from 0 spend, and gives the option to pay through invoicing and have support. Or are you just going through credit card which is intended for hobby use?

I am not defending them, but this is totally on you. What was the missing information? Lack of identity verification or credit card verification? Again that's on you. You should have also received a warning in the cloud console and if you hvae the cloud app on your phone, there as well.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#38

Post by alexmuro »

The thing this article doesn't say is that maplibre-gl v2 supports directly querying pmtiles with http range requests so you don't even need lambda or cloud flare workers to make x/y/z routes in front of the file. So instead of 50c, this is essentially free.

If you are going to to set up that infrastructure you could just use an mbtiles file which has been around for years.

The interesting thing to me is that this stuff is all built on the open source technology of mapbox, and it seems like a real threat to large parts of their business model. Interested to see how it plays out.

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#39

Post by somishere »

This is great. I hadn't heard of it but currently building a research mapping interface for a non-profit and will use it. Interested to know if anyone has suggestions for public aeriel/ satellite tiles. I use ESRI via a dev account which is largely great (extensive hi-res) / best value (??) I've found so far - in a semi exhaustive search. Also the Allen Coral Atlas basemap, CC'd from Planet, which is limited to reefs (and 5m) but fantastic for the mission, not just the licensing. But I'm sure there are alternative solutions. Not in need of up-to-date imagery, but would love to find e.g. a publically released AWS tileset that is updated on a biyearly basis or so ... Am I asking too much :))

Re: Serverless maps at 1/700 the cost of Google Maps API

#40

Post by c0nsumer »

Can any of you suggest a nice tutorial or something for rendering maps for self-hosting at much higher zoom levels? Many of these examples are for larger areas where zoom level 10 is sufficient, but I make hobby maps of mountain bike / hiking trails where the displayed area is only ~10km wide at the most with lots of fine detail. Thus, my maps tend to be shown at zoom levels 12-18, which is much higher than any of the free tilesets.

(Ideally I'd like to take a sane style, tweak some things like making paths clearer and offsetting the text labels, then making tiles. The Thunderforest maps are exactly what I want, but tiny and local and self-hosted.)

Post reply on HN