Google Places API vs Overture Maps Places for AI agents
Google Places API is a paid Google Maps Platform web service that returns place data (search, details, photos, autocomplete) from Google Maps. 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
- Google Places API: The broadest, freshest global place data, with ratings, reviews, hours and photos, for teams that can pay per call and follow Google's display rules.
- 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
| Google Places API | Overture Maps Places | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Places worldwide from Google Maps: businesses, points of interest, addresses, through Text Search, Nearby Search, Place Details and Autocomplete. | 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. You pick fields with a field mask, and the most expensive field you ask for sets the price tier (Essentials, Pro, Enterprise). Fields include place ID, name, address, location, phone numbers, website, hours, ratings, photos and reviews. | 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 | A Google Cloud project with billing enabled, plus an API key or OAuth token. | Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage. |
| Free | A free monthly usage cap for each SKU: 5,000 Text Search Pro or Nearby Search Pro calls, 1,000 at the Enterprise tier, 10,000 Place Details Essentials, and unlimited ID-only searches. The pricing page does not mention the old $200 monthly credit. | No key needed, and its pages state no price |
| Paid | Text Search Pro and Nearby Search Pro cost $32 per 1,000 calls (up to 100,000 a month). Enterprise, the tier that includes phone and website, costs $35 per 1,000. Place Details Pro costs $17 per 1,000. | Not stated on its pages |
| Acting on a result | Phone numbers and website are Enterprise-tier fields. 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 | No pre-fetching, caching or storing beyond the stated exceptions. Place IDs may be stored indefinitely, and latitude/longitude for up to 30 days. Results may be shown without a map, but then the Google logo is required. When shown on a map it must be a Google Map, never a non-Google map. | 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 Maps Platform Terms forbid using Google Maps Content to improve ML or AI models, including to train, test, validate or fine-tune them. Grounding an LLM is allowed only through Maps Grounding Lite, which requires source links and forbids using Grounded Output to train models. | Not stated on its pages |
| Coverage | Worldwide (Google Maps place data). | Global. Release 2026-09-23.1, published monthly. |
| MCP server | Maps Grounding Lite, a Google-hosted MCP endpoint at https://mapstools.googleapis.com/mcp (tools include search_places). Docs: https://developers.google.com/maps/ai/grounding-lite | 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 Google Places API and Openpath vs Overture Maps Places.
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Google Places API?
A Google Cloud project with billing enabled, plus an API key or OAuth token.
Is Google Places API free?
A free monthly usage cap for each SKU: 5,000 Text Search Pro or Nearby Search Pro calls, 1,000 at the Enterprise tier, 10,000 Place Details Essentials, and unlimited ID-only searches. The pricing page does not mention the old $200 monthly credit.
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.
Google Places API, read on October 15, 2026:
- developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/pricing: “Places API Text Search Pro 4FDA-34B1-A910 5,000 $32.00”
- developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/pricing: “Places API Text Search Enterprise E967-44BC-B44D 1,000 $35.00”
- developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/pricing: “Places API Place Details Pro 4ED6-464A-2AFC 5,000 $17.00”
- developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing/pricing: “Places API Text Search Essentials (IDs Only) 635D-A9DD-C520 Unlimited”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/usage-and-billing: “To use the Places API, you must enable billing on each of your projects and include an API key or OAuth token”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/usage-and-billing: “if you select fields in both the Essentials and the Pro SKUs, you are billed based on the Pro SKU”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/data-fields: “International phone number internationalPhoneNumber Place Details Enterprise Text Search Enterprise Nearby Search Enterprise”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/data-fields: “Website URI websiteUri Place Details Enterprise Text Search Enterprise Nearby Search Enterprise”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview: “returns a JSON response. Places API (New) supports authorization by API key and OAuth token.”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies: “You must not pre-fetch, cache, or store Places API content beyond the allowed exceptions.”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies: “You can therefore store place ID values indefinitely.”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/policies: “When displaying Places API data without a Google Map, you must include the Google logo”
- cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/maps-service-terms: “Customer may temporarily cache latitude and longitude values from the Places API for up to 30 consecutive calendar days”
- cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/maps-service-terms: “Customer may use Google Maps Content from the Places API in Customer Applications without a corresponding Google Map.”
- cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms: “use Google Maps Content to improve machine learning and artificial intelligence models, including to train, test, validate or fine-tune the models”
- cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/maps-service-terms: “use Grounded Output to train, develop, or improve any machine learning models or artificial intelligence systems”
- developers.google.com/maps/ai/grounding-lite: “a service with Model Context Protocol (MCP) support”
- developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview: “built on one of the most accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive place models of the real world”
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 .”