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

protomaps.com

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

#51

Post by narrowtux »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #50
narrowtux wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of usecases for apps that don't need these advanced features, and just want a nice backdrop for their geo data. The current offerings of google, mapbox, bing, etc are prohibitively expensive when you just need a small subset of their features. The company I work for is a happy customer of maptiler.com which even offers routing and reverse geocoding. It might not be as great and up to date as google's,…

In this case you should just use Leaflet and OpenStreetMap for a grand total of $0 per month.

That is usually out of the question, because raster tiles don't allow you to customize the map (colors, which features to display at which zoom levels, etc). I find openstreetmap way too busy as a backdrop for data.

As I've said, the solutions are there, and there is an actual demand for cheap vector tile hosting without all of the other cruft that is bundled in the commercial solutions but isn't actually needed.

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

#52

Post by kylebarron »

c0nsumer wrote: post #40

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 th…

Most of these examples go up to zoom 10 or so because they cover a wide area. It's not prohibitive to increase that zoom in a small area because the total number of tiles will still be low. Also keep in mind that for vector data it's possible to "overzoom" and allow the client zoom levels to be higher than the physical data levels.

In terms of self hosted maps for outdoors use, I have some open source repos from a few years ago that may help with that. [0] is a style based on the openmaptiles vector tile schema for outdoors purposes. I believe that readme has some overall instructions, plus other repos in the org are for making data. (Nowadays planetiler is probably the best way to make OSM vector tiles though)

[0]: https://github.com/nst-guide/osm-liberty-topo

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

#53

Post by flangola7 »

gniv wrote: post #27
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #8

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

> $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.

They could have it initially run a Google api search and cache that kind of local data for when the next person runs it

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

#54

Post by tantalor »

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #8

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

I don't know about "20 tiles per session"

That's like, 1 pan or 1 zoom. It might as well be a static map if the users don't actually interact with it.

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

#55

Post by m4rtink »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #36
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would argue its easier and quite fun to do via StreetComplete:

https://streetcomplete.app/

(Mobile app where you can fix and enhance OpenStreetMap data on the go.)

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

#56

Post by habi »

narrowtux wrote: post #51
iLoveOncall wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case you should just use Leaflet and OpenStreetMap for a grand total of $0 per month.

That is usually out of the question, because raster tiles don't allow you to customize the map (colors, which features to display at which zoom levels, etc). I find openstreetmap way too busy as a backdrop for data. As I've said, the solutions are there, and there is an actual demand for cheap vector tile hosting without all of the other cruft that is bundled in the commercial solutions but isn't actually needed.

> I find openstreetmap way too busy as a backdrop for data.

Fortunately there’s a large selection of background layers for leaflet: http://leaflet-extras.github.io/leaflet-providers/preview/ I quite like CartoDB Positron for as a muted background.

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

#57

Post by benburleson »

tantalor wrote: post #54
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #8

The real meat of this story: > A web application with 50,000 map loads using the Google Maps API will cost $350 per month. > A similar amount of traffic running through a Protomaps CDN install on Cloudflare, with an average of 20 tiles per session, costs fifty cents in Cloudflare Workers request fees. $350 versus $0.50! Who's going to be the first to build a (maybe Google Maps-compatible?) API on top of this and sell…

I don't know about "20 tiles per session" That's like, 1 pan or 1 zoom. It might as well be a static map if the users don't actually interact with it.

I would be that's actually a majority of usage in the wild. Sometimes I'll zoom out if I need more context, but I'm not wandering around most embedded gmaps.

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

#58

Post by narrowtux »

habi wrote: post #56
narrowtux wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is usually out of the question, because raster tiles don't allow you to customize the map (colors, which features to display at which zoom levels, etc). I find openstreetmap way too busy as a backdrop for data. As I've said, the solutions are there, and there is an actual demand for cheap vector tile hosting without all of the other cruft that is bundled in the commercial solutions but isn't actually needed.

> I find openstreetmap way too busy as a backdrop for data. Fortunately there’s a large selection of background layers for leaflet: http://leaflet-extras.github.io/leaflet-providers/preview/ I quite like CartoDB Positron for as a muted background.

Thanks, but I'm really happy with our vector tileset solution, and don't want to downgrade to raster tiles. They are pretty slow compared to vector tiles with mapbox/maplibre gl.

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

#59

Post by wcedmisten »

danpalmer wrote: post #30
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.

Additionally, embedding maps in websites, the thing that most small businesses are wanting to do, is free. The pricing looks to me like it's centered around features that companies might be integrating into their products in order to monetise, which seems fair.

Only for a static image of a map. The "slippy" map that supports zooming and panning isn't free.

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

#60

Post by yafbum »

Pretty cool demo, what I wonder about is how the quality is and how long they can keep updating their tiles. My experience last time I did something similar was that the OSM data grows fast, the import and rendering takes longer and longer, and something tends to break in the process or create rendering problems in some random countries if you don't spend time checking.

A more obvious quality issue for example: on their demo, Arabic text renders wrong (left to right instead of right to left, it'd be like printing kroY weN instead of New York)

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