Insane Google Maps pricing

[martin-s]

F*** me. A 14x price increase?!

https://mapsplatform.googleblog.com/2018/05/introducing-google-maps-platform.html
https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

Most sites use dynamic maps - currently free for 25,000 map loads a day and $0.50 per thousand thereafter.

TL;DR: If you get more than 28,000 impressions per month on pages with maps, you're going to have to get your wallet out.

To the tune of $7 per thousand.

 

[Edwin]

Wow! I can see a lot of people will have to reconsider their business models. Some of those CPM charges are way higher than you could realistically expect a map-type page to generate in ad revenue.

Perhaps this might be the way to go?
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Maps_Example

This might be of some help...
http://mapstraction.com/

 

[martin-s]

There are lots of potential options, but all mean developer time. And many are more expensive than Google Maps used to be.

Here.com and Mapbox for example.

 

[Gregory]

The TomTom Maps APIs are a high-quality alternative with a very affordable pricing model. You always get 2,500 transactions per day for free and additional transactions are charged at max. $0,5/1000 transactions (or even less depending on your volumes and usage). Check out some examples here: https://developer.tomtom.com/maps-sdk-web/functional-examples More info about the pricing model can be found here: https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api

P.S. I'm working for TomTom so feel free to reach out to me directly in case you have more questions.

 

[martin-s]

We've used TomTom before, but I'm not actually a fan, sorry Gregory.

Leaflet + Thunderforest or Stadiamaps looks the most likely option for us right now.