Google Maps API Pricing

Perhaps others can confirm everything I’m sharing below because I’ve only run into this for the first time today with a client’s app. It looks like if you’re generating a new API key to use for location related products (Maps, Routes, Places), Google is requiring your project to be linked to a billing account.

See pricing change info here: https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/understanding-cost-of-use

See new pricing table here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

Apparently you get $200 of recurring monthly credit to offset your costs, but overall it’s a pay-as-you-go system.

I’ve been using keys I generated well before this change, so I hadn’t noticed any interruptions in my test apps, however, I noticed today that it now renders with a “For development use only” watermark. According to this recent thread, the lack of a linked billing account would be the cause.

I wonder if anyone is able to display maps with a newer API key generated in the console (https://console.developers.google.com) that is not linked to a billing account? I just want to make sure I understand this new policy. I’ve been seeing Bubblers experience issues with map display and address search - this might be part of it?

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I’ve set up several new accounts in the past few months. Each new console setup forced a billing profile be set up before it was possible to proceed with creating the API keys.

With my personal account (~2 years old), Google nudged (er, required) me to add a credit card to my console. My account was reclassified as a “Google Maps Transition Account,” which capped the total credit at $200 and “shuts down” for anything beyond that until the account is transitioned (ie. credit card added to the project(s)).

See this page on Google’s website. Relevant excerpt below.

The “Google Maps Platform Transition Account” was created to help certain customers transition to our new pay-as-you-go pricing plan. This transition account enabled Google to provide these customers with a one-time credit, so that they could continue using Google Maps Platform up to the limit of the $200 free tier. Once this limit is exceeded, the billing account will shut down and you will lose access to the service. To avoid service interruptions, we urge you to set your own billing account, and continue to enjoy the $200 monthly free tier. To change the billing account for your project:

Yeah, that’s probably why I have this half-way access. At least it forces you with new accounts so there’s no confusion. Cool, thanks for sharing that extra info.

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Google always preaches to other companies by saying “Don’t Be Evil”. However I think Google does not think money is evil! I have been using google api since the inception of its codes!..for free. Still now the same usuage. Now Google wants to make money from those entities which helped Google grow. Google grew only through crowd-sourcing! Although Google insists its charges is fair if the usage is below $200 and is free…well I know it is free. But lets be clear… if it is free why ask for credit card details…this this evil.
If I intend to use it for free and say I gave my credit card details and one fine day a hacker decides to send malicious request numbering in thousands, Google will automatically charge me…then what do I do? What will google do?
Instead they should do a fair charge by charging or blocking if the api requests that goes above free usuage.

What Google is doing is akin to letting you on a plane for free and asking for charges midflight!
Imagine the scale of this scam! The whole world!
Hoping everyone realizes the situation and shout out.

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@romanmg - Thank you. I was wondering why my maps stopped working but I found this thread after a search and linking a billing account worked for me. Thanks for posting.

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THIS!
I just found out about this, i used their API back in 2016 it was completely free.
I don’t understand why they require your billing information If it is free! But i don’t think they want to keep it this way.
I have noticed the same thing with their AdWords as well, they give you free credit but you can’t use it until you provide billing information.
So greedy and evil.
It is a matter of time until they stop giving you free credit and they start charging you to use their API.

I have a question on how my users interactions with my site and google maps will impact the costs I’d have to pay to google.

From my understanding on the google maps pricing guide

If I have a map on a search results page that has 5,000 different companies listed and the markers are all referencing the companies geolocation as saved in my database as a geographic address

58%20PM

how does that affect my google api usage and charges?

Will each company’s marker represent one “load” and therefore a map with 5,000 companies represented equate to 5,000 loads, which would imply that it would only take 20 users to load the map to reach the 100,000 threshold before beginning to be charged?

The entire pricing guide and how to understand it in terms of actual usage from my app is pretty confusing to me and I’d like to get a better idea of how it all works so that I don’t end up with astronomical bills from google that make utilizing a map view of company listings unaffordable.

Any input on the discussion would be helpful.

I’ve dug into the google FAQ more ( wow there is tooo much information on these pages )…based on the snippet from my google search I found this

58%20PM

This is obviously a reference to the fact that they give a $200 monthly credit. Which is why they say $6.67 a day for 30 day span. What I am confused about now is,

  1. Is the $200 credit for each API? Meaning I have geolocation and maps and places API…does each get $200 a month credit for a total of $600, or is it $200 total to be used across all APIs?

  2. Is there another service that is free and compatible with bubble?

  3. Does it matter how many locations are displayed on a map at one given time?

Here is the link to google’s attempt to explain the pricing

I’m not 100% sure, but I think all the geo, places, and maps API’s are part of “Google Maps”, so the $200 applies to everything.

Search the forums for Leafy Maps. @vini_brito wrote a plugin.

I believe it does. You should definitely try to optimize for the number of HTTP requests sent to the API.

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Hey - did you ever figure out the pricing structure? Especially for your third point.

No I haven’t. I figure at this point the amount that is free is probably enough and when the time comes I’ll take more time to dig deeper to figure it out.

hello @boston85719 I wish I could help you. But I am confused as well like you, please let me know if you find a better option, I am creating a map-based platform and I think that will be very expensive in the future.
Regards

I use Stadia maps through leafy maps plugin. Plugin is free. Stadia is dirt cheap compared to google.

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would you still recommend Stadia through leafy maps, if the app works a lot with api calls?

Stadia I think is still the cheapest

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