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by caleblloyd 3653 days ago
This is fantastic. I talked to Google for their geocoding API a couple years ago and was quoted $17,500 per year for a pretty basic package that included up to 10 requests per second and 100,000 geocodes per day if I remember correctly.

I looked at hosting OSM myself but it seemed like a lot of work. Huge data files for the initial import and setting up daily increment jobs. Glad to see a managed service emerging!
4 comments
freyfogle 3653 days ago
You may also enjoy: https://geocoder.opencagedata.com
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Piskvorrr 3653 days ago
Once you get past the initial import, the incremental updates are essentially no-maintenance. The situation has improved since a few years ago, IIRC - the toolchain got significantly better.

But yeah, for the occasional geocode, running your own instance is overkill.

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knz 3653 days ago
If I recall correctly MapBox used to have better pricing when they first started. The government agency I worked for was quoted a reasonable rate per 1,000 addresses but the minimum required usage to use it was too prohibitive (paying tens of thousands even although the actual usage was < $1,000/year).
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Cshelton 3653 days ago
I think MapBox's rates are slightly better. To Store geocoded addresses, we pay ~$12,000/year I believe. That gets you like 1 million request/day I think.

We also felt more comfortable with MapBox given Google's history of sudden api breaking changes...

Also, our requirements had to have the geocoding be very accurate. MapBox and Google's geocoding results came out to be pretty much identical. About every other service, both free and paid, were not accurate enough.

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knz 3653 days ago
We were quoted 10M minimum geocodes @ $2.50/1,000 if we store any of the data. If my sleep deprived brain is doing that math correctly, the minimum buy would be $25,000/year. Our monthly geocode needs are ~ 5,000/month so the minimum per year is way out of align with our actual usage. Other than that it is a great product. I just wish their pricing for storing the data was more realistic.
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gopi_ar 3653 days ago
Indeed, and we need SSDs on a RAID! I remember we tried importing this on HDDs a year ago and it took 2 weeks and the average response time was 2000ms!

Our current config allows an import in 8 hours and responds within 20ms (not including network latency). It's not cheap though.

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