Key Takeaways
- Google Places API pricing looks manageable until every feature starts triggering multiple billable requests.
- Autocomplete sessions, Nearby Search, and Place Details can quietly become the biggest line items in your infrastructure bill.
- Growth should increase revenue, not multiply API costs every time traffic spikes.
- SafeGraph shifts the model from per-request dependency to flat-fee POI data licensing.
- The real cost of API-based location data is not just money. It’s latency, unpredictability, and limited control over the data itself.
Google has devoted a lot of resources to making geospatial data accessible at scale through products like Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Business Profile.
If you’re building on the Google Places API, you’ve probably already felt the pricing complexity. But how much does it actually cost? When you dig into the numbers, it becomes clear that the costs can scale faster than your product does.tion the costs can scale faster than your product does.
To demonstrate, we’ll break down the various costs associated with using the Google Places API. Along the way, we’ll explain why SafeGraph’s Places data is a stronger fit for teams that need to access and query POI data within their own stack– across pricing, flexibility, and data control.
To start, we’ll give a general overview of how Google Places API pricing works.
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How Google Places API pricing works
The Google Places API price works on a “pay as you go” model. You can get a 90-day or $300-credit free trial of the Google Places API if you’ve never used paid services on Google Cloud or the Google Maps Platform (which includes the Google Places API). In addition, you get $200 worth of free request credits each month.
Beyond that, your organization will have to measure how much it uses the different services (SKUs) of the Google Places API, and create a budget accordingly. Then it will have to pay in advance to put credit on its account for one of three tiers of service. If your company’s usage of Google Places API goes beyond the amount of credit it paid, it will result in additional charges.
There’s also a subtler issue worth naming upfront: the pay-as-you-go model means your costs scale directly with your usage. The more users your app gets, the more API calls fire, and the bigger your bill. In other words, growth works against you here. With SafeGraph, you negotiate a flat fee for the data you need, so your cost stays the same whether your traffic doubles or triples.
Pay-as-you-go pricing model where you pay by SKU
Google’s API for places bases pricing on stock keeping units (SKUs). So it bills for how often its services are used, and bills different rates for different types of services. Each SKU has three pricing tiers: one for 0 to 100,000 requests per month, another for 100,001 to 500,000 requests per month, and a third for over 500,000 requests per month.
You can calculate how much your company can expect to pay each month by using the Google Places API pricing calculator.
How Google Places API Autocomplete sessions work
The autocomplete function can be a bit tricky when it comes to the cost of Google Places API, since it may provide information the user ultimately doesn’t utilize. An autocomplete “session” starts once a user has typed enough characters into the search bar to generate an autocomplete suggestion. Further suggestions can be generated as the user adds or deletes characters. The session ends when the user selects a place they want to get more information about.
Each autocomplete session needs a session token to authenticate the other calls. Where that comes from depends on which Google API you’re using, as outlined below.
API | Billing | Does your application need to provide session tokens? |
Google Places API Place Autocomplete | Can be session-based or per request | Yes |
Google Maps JavaScript API Places Autocomplete | Can be session-based or per request | Yes |
Google Maps JavaScript API Autocomplete Widget | Session-based billing automatically enabled | No |
Different types of data SKUs in Google Places API
The Google Places API classifies the different kinds of data and functions it calls when responding to a Places request. Depending on the type of data and/or function called, there may be an additional charge – as we’ll outline below.
One or more Data SKUs can be triggered by the following calls:
Platform | Calls |
Android | fetchPlace(), findCurrentPlace() |
iOS | fetchPlaceFromPlaceID:, findPlaceLikelihoodsFromCurrentLocationWithPlaceFields: |
Web service | each Places request, depending on the fields specified in the request |
Basic Data
Basic data contains things like a place’s name, address, building footprint, feature photo, category, or status of being open or permanently closed.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
100,001 – 500,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
500,001+ | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
As you can see, basic data calls have no additional cost on top of the price of the related Place Details request. However, that is not the case for all types of data, as we will soon demonstrate.
Contact Data
Contact data has to do with operational information about a business. This includes the hours it’s open, its phone number(s), and its website URL (if it has one).
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.003 | $3 | $300 |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0024 | $2.40 | $1,200 |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Now you can see how the Google Maps or Places API cost can start to add up. If your organization is on the low volume request tier, contact data can cost up to $300 extra per month, while the middle tier can cost up to an additional $1200 per month! With SafeGraph, we work with you to determine the right price for the exact columns and rows of data you need.
Atmosphere Data
Atmosphere data has to do mainly with user-generated information, such as ratings and reviews of a business. It can also include the relative price rating of that business’s products or services.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.005 | $5 | $500 |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.004 | $4 | $2,000 |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
This type of social sentiment can be useful in some cases, but it’s very subjective. SafeGraph doesn’t include this type of data because we’re more interested in quality factual information about physical places, not opinions. So by not providing data your organization may not even need, we can save you up to $2000 or more every month.
Autocomplete – Per Request
These calls refer to autocomplete requests that are invalid because a session token is not provided or is reused. In some cases, they may also be invalid because the user types (or copies and pastes) multiple addresses into the search field.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.00283 | $2.83 | $283+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.00227 | $2.27 | $1,135+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
The basic idea here is: with whatever application you’re using part of the Google Places API (except the Google Maps JavaScript API Autocomplete Widget) for, it’s your responsibility to program it so it supplies session tokens correctly for autocomplete instances. If it doesn’t, you’ll still be on the hook for a feature of your app that doesn’t work. And even if you do get things set up properly, Google Places API’s cost can still add up with the autocomplete function if the user isn’t careful with how they set up their data requests.
SafeGraph, on the other hand, doesn’t need to try to predict what you’re looking for information on. We just bundle together the data you want and let you do the finding. So you’ll never have to worry about a needless expense that could cost you upwards of $1,100 per month.
Autocomplete without Place Details – Per Session
This refers to autocomplete requests where the user ultimately doesn’t select a suggested place to view more information about, and instead chooses another action.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.017 | $17 | $1,700 |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0136 | $13.60 | $6,800 |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Even if a user never actually selects a place to view from autocomplete suggestions, you still get charged for using the autocomplete function. Based on the Google Places autocomplete API pricing, that could cost you almost $7,000 per month.
At SafeGraph, we put much more focus into making sure we not only have the data about a place, but also that said data is correct and unambiguous. This cuts down on the need for repeated API calls because queries about names or addresses of certain locations don’t return what the user expects.
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Autocomplete (included with Place Details) – Per Session
These calls refer to autocomplete sessions where the user selects a suggested place to view more details about it.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
100,001 – 500,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
500,001+ | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
While it looks like autocomplete sessions that end with the user choosing a suggested place won’t cost you anything, that’s not exactly the case. A successful session produces a Place Details request, which does cost money. In addition, the Places Detail request will also call data (Basic, Contact, or Atmosphere), based on what fields are specified in the request. If none are specified, then all data types will be called, and you will be charged accordingly.
Again, this Google Places API autocomplete pricing is something you’ll never have to worry about with SafeGraph. We don’t try to predict what places you’ll want information on; just tell us, and if we have it, we can give it to you.
Query Autocomplete – Per Request
The Google Places API can also be programmed to suggest categorical phrases for narrowing a search to specific types of places (e.g. “pizza in New York, NY”). This is in addition to the places themselves.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.00283 | $2.83 | $283+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.00227 | $2.27 | $1,135+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Place Details
Place details are called when a user selects a specific location that they want more information about (as opposed to a categorical search, as explained in the above section).
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.017 | $17 | $1,700+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0136 | $13.60 | $6,800+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Remember that these requests will also call different data types (Basic, Contact, or Atmosphere) depending on what data fields are specified in the request. If no fields are specified, all types of data on a place will be called, and you will be charged for them. So the Google Places API price level could go up to 2.5 cents per Place Details call if your organization is on the minimum plan and repeatedly requests all types of data, which can cost up to $2,500 extra a month!
With SafeGraph, most attribute categories are included in the data by default. So you don’t need to worry about costs compounding like this. Also, we have a more flexible pricing structure based on a negotiation of how much value you’ll get out of our data, rather than based on an arbitrary number of API calls.
Place Details – ID Refresh
This is a request to retrieve only a location’s unique Google place ID if it changed for some reason (e.g. a business closed, or a new business moved in).
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
100,001 – 500,000 | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
500,001+ | No additional charge | No additional charge | No additional charge |
This particular function has no extra charge, and Google also recommends refreshing place IDs once every 12 months. With SafeGraph’s data, however, managing unique place IDs is done on our end through location data standards like Placekey. We also update our Places data every month, so your business gets much fresher data without needing to jump through any hoops.
Find Place
Find Place requests use text strings in various data fields to search for, identify, and view details on a specific location.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.017 | $17 | $1,700+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0136 | $13.60 | $6,800+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Like with a Place Details request, a Find Place request will also call any specified data fields. If any of those data fields are classified as Contact or Atmosphere data, you will be charged for them on top of the base cost of the Find Place request. If no fields are specified, the request will return only the location’s unique place ID. Since this is considered Basic data, it will not cost anything extra.
SafeGraph Places data includes most location attributes and information as part of the package when you purchase it. So you can just search through the dataset at your convenience to find a place you’re looking for, rather than having to pay each time you call this data from an API.
Place – Nearby Search
Nearby Search allows you to search for a group of related places near a specified location. You can search by keywords, languages, price level, categories, and whether a place is open or closed. You can also constrain searches to a specific radius, or sort results based on relevance or proximity.
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.032 | $32 | $3,200+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0256 | $25.60 | $12,800+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
It’s also worth noting that beyond cost, every one of these calls adds a network round-trip to your app. Each request has to travel to Google’s servers, get processed, and return before your user sees anything. On mobile networks or during peak load, that delay adds up and affects the experience your users have. With SafeGraph, the data lives inside your own infrastructure, so queries run locally with no external dependency slowing things down.
Place – Text Search
Text Search allows you to search for places based on keywords related to a place’s name, address, or type of establishment. You can also refine results by language, price level, category, and whether a place is open or closed. You can also constrain searches to a specific region, location, or radius around a location.
Calls per Month | Google Places API Price | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.032 | $32 | $3,200+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0256 | $25.60 | $12,800+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Like with Nearby Search, it is not possible to constrain the types of data fields that a Text Search calls. So each request will also incur charges from any Contact or Atmosphere data that is returned, on top of the base cost of the request.
If you use SafeGraph’s Places dataset instead, you don’t need to worry about this. You can find a place by searching over 20 standard attributes’ worth of information, including up-to-date open hours and the market’s most granular category tags. More importantly, the data is all there from the start – you don’t have to repeatedly query an API to get it, which can get pretty expensive.
Place Photo
This type of request allows for resizing a photo of a place so that it fits a screen. In other words, it allows you to manipulate a photo referenced by a Place Details request (which can return up to 10 photos at once); or a Find Place, Nearby Search, or Text Search request (each of which can return up to 1 photo).
Calls per Month | Price per Call | Price per 1000 Calls | Price per Plan Max |
0 – 100,000 | $0.007 | $7 | $700+ |
100,001 – 500,000 | $0.0056 | $5.60 | $2,800+ |
500,001+ | Contact sales team | Contact sales team | Contact sales team |
Why data teams choose SafeGraph over Google Places API
You pay a flat fee, not per call
One of the biggest weaknesses of the Places API pricing Google uses is that it’s inflexible. It forces organizations to play a guessing game with how much their app(s) will be using the API, and choose a rate accordingly. Not only are there penalties for overuse or underuse, but each request can call multiple types of data that your organization might not need for its use cases. And more often than not, you have to pay extra for that potentially wasted data.
SafeGraph doesn’t take this kind of one-size-fits-all, pay-as-you-go approach. We work with your company to identify exactly what data you need, and then negotiate a price to make sure you’re getting value for money. The data is all there from the start, available any time, for a flat fee, no paying piece by piece every time you need it.
You can actually run analysis on the data
With a per-call API, questions like “how many competitors are within 2 miles of each of our locations?” would require thousands of individual requests, plus the engineering work to stitch it all together. With a flat file in your own environment, that’s just a query. You can also load it directly into platforms you’re probably already using: Amazon S3, Databricks Delta Share, Snowflake, CARTO, or Esri ArcGIS.
Data is our only product
POI data isn’t a side project for us, it’s the only thing we do. Google’s location data is built to power consumer products at global scale, and they’re exceptional at it. But that focus means their API is optimized for real-time lookups, not bulk analytics, enrichment pipelines, or internal tooling. When your use case diverges from what the API was designed for, you feel it in attribute gaps, in data freshness, and in a pricing model that penalizes you for growing.
SafeGraph is built for a different job. Our datasets are designed to be loaded directly into your stack: Snowflake, BigQuery, S3, Databricks and queried however you need. Attribute fill rates are higher for commercial use cases, updates ship monthly rather than on Google’s schedule, and licensing is structured around your actual use case, not your call volume. Need coverage for a single metro? A vertical-specific dataset? An enterprise license for internal redistribution? We build the contract around what you need, not the other way around.
There’s a better way to get the same data, at a price that doesn’t change based on how well your app performs. Book a demo with SafeGraph and we’ll walk you through exactly what you’d get, what it would cost, and how it compares to what you’re paying today. No commitment, no sales pressure, just a straight answer on whether it makes sense for your use case.
FAQ’s
1. How much does the Google Places API cost?
Google Places API uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model where costs depend on API calls, SKUs, and the types of data requested.
2. Why does Google Places API pricing become expensive?
Costs increase as applications generate more requests for features like autocomplete, Nearby Search, Place Details, and atmosphere or contact data.
3. Does Google Places API charge for autocomplete?
Yes. Certain autocomplete sessions and requests are billable, especially when session tokens are missing or users do not complete a place selection.
4. What is the difference between Google Places API and SafeGraph Places?
SafeGraph Places is a flat-file POI dataset. You license the data and load it directly into your own stack, so you own the query and control the cost. Google Places API is better suited for real-time user-facing lookups; SafeGraph is built for analytics, enrichment, and internal tooling at scale.
5. Can SafeGraph replace Google Places API for POI data?
For organizations that need large-scale POI datasets, analytics, enrichment, or internal search systems, SafeGraph can reduce dependency on repeated API calls and unpredictable usage costs.