The new pricing strategy employed by Google for their Maps Platform is a freemium one – all users get to make $200-worth of API calls for free each month. That works out as, for example:
- up to 28,000 free loads of Dynamic Maps; or
- up to 100,000 free loads of Static Maps; or
- up to 40,000 free Directions calls; or
- up to 40,000 free Geolocation calls.
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mportantly, the new pricing system allows unlimited free use of simple Dynamic Maps in Embeds and in Mobile Native apps. So, if you’re just serving users a simple map with a marker, say to show your office location, you’ll continue to pay nothing under the new system. However, if you use the Embed API in Directions, Views or Search mode, you will be eligible for billing.
No more API calls without billing details
As of June 11th, calls to the various Google Maps APIs which don’t include an API key will return an error or a watermarked map (‘for development purposes only’). So, even if your usage falls well within the free $200 credit, you still have to create an account and provide Google with billing details to keep using the APIs.
You can set usage caps at $200 per month to ensure you won’t get charged, but for organisations who were previously using a variety of maps for free, updating all their implementations to use an API key could be a major headache.
