[evanmarks]

There are 3 broad groups of geocoding services out there.

1. Free tier with only a few allowed uses (and enterprise access starting in the 5 figures). Google maps falls into this category as in the free tier you can only use the geocoding results to display points on a Google Map that is freely accessible. Google obviously has great results and is worldwide.

2. Open to everyone but rate limited. This is where Nominatim/Open Street Map falls. They have coverage worldwide and you can freely access the API, but with only 1 request per second. I also found that they could not find results for quite a few addresses I tested which were returned easily by other services.

3. Paid API with no restrictions on use. This is where LatLon.io falls and Opencage as well. They look to have a pretty good product and will be a good competitor!