Azure Maps Search vs Overture Maps Places for AI agents
Azure Maps Search is Microsoft Azure's location search service for geocoding and finding places and businesses by name or category. Overture Maps Places is an open, monthly-released dataset of places (points of interest), downloadable as Parquet files. It is not an API.
The short answer
- Azure Maps Search: Teams already on Azure who want place search billed on their Azure account under Microsoft's enterprise terms.
- Overture Maps Places: A free, permissively licensed global POI base you can store, index and serve yourself. Not live data, and with no hours, ratings or reviews.
Side by side
| Azure Maps Search | Overture Maps Places | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Addresses, places and businesses by name or category. Search v1.0 (POI, category, nearby search) is superseded by Search 2026-01-01 but still works. | Nothing to call. You download or query the files yourself, for example with DuckDB. It contains tens of millions of places such as schools, businesses, hospitals and landmarks. |
| Returns | JSON. Search v1 POI results include name, phone, url, categories, brands and optional opening hours. | GeoParquet place records with names, addresses, taxonomy and basic_category (which replaced categories in September 2026), phones, websites, socials, a 0–1 confidence score and source info. |
| Before the first call | An Azure subscription with an Azure Maps account. Authentication is by Shared Key, Microsoft Entra ID or SAS token. | Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage. |
| Free | 5,000 Search transactions a month. | No key needed, and its pages state no price |
| Paid | $4.50 per 1,000 Search transactions (under 500K a month). Volume discounts start at 100,000 transactions. | Not stated on its pages |
| Acting on a result | v1 POI results include phone and website URL. There is no way to message a business through the API. | Records can include phones, websites and social links. There is no messaging; it is static data. |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Results may be cached only to reduce latency, not to serve multiple users, and for no longer than the header validity or 6 months, whichever is shorter. Geocodes may be kept while the Azure account is active. Results may not be displayed on third-party maps or content. | You can store and reuse it. Licensed CDLA Permissive 2.0 or Apache 2.0 depending on source (Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and others); some sources need their own attribution. Does not include OpenStreetMap data. |
| AI in its terms | The Product Terms say the customer may not modify or create a derivative work from any content using machine learning or artificial intelligence unless the terms expressly allow it. They also forbid building a competing or derived database. | Not stated on its pages |
| Coverage | Not stated on its pages | Global. Release 2026-09-23.1, published monthly. |
| MCP server | No official server listed | No official server listed |
Where Openpath fits
If the agent needs a local business to message in Austin, Texas, Openpath returns the listings themselves, free and with no key. See Openpath vs Azure Maps Search and Openpath vs Overture Maps Places.
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Azure Maps Search?
An Azure subscription with an Azure Maps account. Authentication is by Shared Key, Microsoft Entra ID or SAS token.
Is Azure Maps Search free?
5,000 Search transactions a month.
What do I need before I can use Overture Maps Places?
Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage.
Is Overture Maps Places free?
No key needed, and its pages state no price.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
Azure Maps Search, read on October 15, 2026:
- azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-maps: “Meters Free <500K 500K+ ... Search 5,000 $4.50 Contact Us”
- azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-maps: “Unless otherwise specified, the prices below are per 1,000 transactions.”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/rest-api-azure-maps: “search for places and businesses by name or category”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/migrate-search-v1-api: “Azure Maps Search API version 1.0 has been superseded by Search API version 2026‑01‑01”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/migrate-search-v1-api: “While Search v1 continues to function, new development should use the latest Search API”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/maps/search/get-search-poi: “Details of the returned POI including information such as the name, phone, url address, and classifications.”
- learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/azure-maps-authentication: “Azure Maps supports three authentication methods: Shared Key, Microsoft Entra ID, and Shared Access Signature (SAS) Token.”
- microsoft.com/licensing/terms/productoffering/MicrosoftAzure/MCA: “Results may not be stored for longer than: (i) the validity period indicated in returned headers; or (ii) 6 months, whichever is shorter.”
- microsoft.com/licensing/terms/productoffering/MicrosoftAzure/MCA: “Customer may not cache or store results delivered by the Azure Maps API for the purpose of scaling such Results”
- microsoft.com/licensing/terms/productoffering/MicrosoftAzure/MCA: “Customer may not modify or create a derivative work based on any content using machine learning or artificial intelligence”
- microsoft.com/licensing/terms/productoffering/MicrosoftAzure/MCA: “Customer may not use Azure Maps or any part thereof to create a competing database or service”
Overture Maps Places, read on October 15, 2026:
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “The Overture places theme contains tens of millions of point representations of real-world entities”
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “Places is published under the CDLA Permissive 2.0 and Apache 2.0 licenses, depending on the source.”
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “The theme does not include OpenStreetMap data.”
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2026-09-23.1/theme=places/type=place/*”
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “The categories property has been removed from the places schema as of the September 2026 release”
- docs.overturemaps.org/guides/places: “confidence , CAST ( websites AS JSON ) AS websites , CAST ( socials AS JSON ) AS socials”
- docs.overturemaps.org/attribution: “Some of the data sources we use in Overture datasets require their own attribution, according to their licenses.”
- docs.overturemaps.org/attribution: “Data from Meta . Available under CDLA Permissive 2.0 .”