HERE Geocoding & Search vs OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass) for AI agents
HERE Geocoding & Search is HERE's location search API family (Discover/Search, Autosuggest, Geocode, Reverse Geocode) for finding addresses and places/POIs. Free, donation-run public servers for searching OpenStreetMap data: Nominatim for geocoding and place search, Overpass for querying OSM objects.
The short answer
- HERE Geocoding & Search: Cheap per-call POI and address search with a free monthly tier. Good when results stay inside an app and are not fed to AI systems.
- OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass): Free, openly licensed geocoding and occasional place lookups at low volume, or a base to self-host. It is not a backend for a public app at scale.
Side by side
| HERE Geocoding & Search | OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass) | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Addresses, places/POIs, EV charge points and third-party data such as Tripadvisor, searchable by free text or along routes. | OpenStreetMap data worldwide: addresses, places and mapped POIs. |
| Returns | JSON with an items array. Only title, id, resultType and position are guaranteed. Place results can add address, categories, contacts (phone, www, email) and openingHours. | Nominatim returns xml, json, jsonv2 (the default), geojson or geocodejson. With extratags=1 it adds extra tags such as opening hours or a wikipedia link when mapped. |
| Before the first call | A HERE platform account on the Base Plan, which requires entering a payment method at sign-up (since 2025), plus an app ID and API key. | No account or key. Nominatim requires a valid User-Agent or Referer that identifies your app, and visible attribution. |
| Free | 5,000 Discover/Search transactions a month on the Base Plan (30,000 for Geocode and Autocomplete). | Free within strict limits. Nominatim allows an absolute maximum of 1 request per second. Overpass asks users to stay at or below roughly 10,000 requests and 1 GB a day. |
| Paid | Discover/Search: EUR 2.33 per 1,000 (5,001 to 200,000), then EUR 1.87 per 1,000 up to 1,000,000. | No paid tier. Heavy users are told to run their own instance or use commercial third-party providers. |
| Acting on a result | Place results can include phone, website and email contacts. There is no way to message a business through the API. | Phone or website appear only when mappers tagged them in OSM, through Nominatim's extratags. There is no messaging. |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | The Platform Terms bar caching or storing Results outside the Platform for more than 30 days (24 hours for Japan and Positioning). The Base Plan also excludes asset-tracking use cases. | Data is ODbL (share-alike), and you must credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. Nominatim requires results to be cached for bulk jobs. It bans systematic queries, downloading all POIs in an area, autocomplete, and reselling results. |
| AI in its terms | Restrictive. Unless your plan or a separate agreement allows it, the Platform Terms (6.3 f) forbid using HERE Materials "in connection with a machine learning or artificial intelligence (“AI”) system," including generative AI. | Nominatim's policy has a "Usage in LLMs" section. LLMs may only suggest the service if they prominently point to the usage policy. The public API must not be built into or offered through no-code, low-code or vibe-coding platforms as a generic place-search service. |
| Coverage | Not stated on the pages read. Searches can be limited to countries by ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code. | Worldwide OpenStreetMap data. POI completeness depends on volunteer mapping. |
| MCP server | HERE Location Reasoning, an MCP server at https://hlr.here.ai/mcp (docs: https://docs.here.com/location-reasoning/docs/hlroverview). Access terms and pricing for it were not confirmed. | 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 HERE Geocoding & Search and Openpath vs OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass).
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use HERE Geocoding & Search?
A HERE platform account on the Base Plan, which requires entering a payment method at sign-up (since 2025), plus an app ID and API key.
Is HERE Geocoding & Search free?
5,000 Discover/Search transactions a month on the Base Plan (30,000 for Geocode and Autocomplete).
What do I need before I can use OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass)?
No account or key. Nominatim requires a valid User-Agent or Referer that identifies your app, and visible attribution.
Is OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass) free?
Free within strict limits. Nominatim allows an absolute maximum of 1 request per second. Overpass asks users to stay at or below roughly 10,000 requests and 1 GB a day.
Sources
Every line about another company comes from its own pages. Prices and terms change, so check the source before you rely on one.
HERE Geocoding & Search, read on October 15, 2026:
- here.com/get-started/pricing: “Discover / Search pricing Monthly Transactions Cost per 1,000 0 to 5,000 Free 5,001 to 200,000 €2.33”
- here.com/get-started/pricing: “200,001 to 1,000,000 €1.87 1,000,001+ Contact us 1 Transaction is counted for every Request.”
- here.com/get-started/pricing: “Discover addresses, Places/POIs, EV charge points, truck-specific attributes and 3rd party data like Tripadvisor”
- here.com/learn/blog/april-2025-platform-release-notes: “The Base plan requires entering a payment method during the onboarding process to access our platform.”
- docs.here.com/geocoding-and-search/docs/discover: “Only title, id, resultType, position can be expected for all results.”
- legal.here.com/en-gb/terms/here-platform-terms: “for more than 30 days, except HERE Positioning services which cannot be cached or stored outside the Platform for more than 24 hours”
- legal.here.com/en-gb/terms/here-platform-terms: “Use HERE Materials in connection with a machine learning or artificial intelligence (“AI”) system”
- legal.here.com/en-gb/terms/here-platform-terms: “Except as otherwise permitted in your Subscription Plan or separate agreement with HERE, you may not:”
- here.com/get-started/pricing/base-plan-restrictions: “The following use cases are excluded from the Base Plan.”
- docs.here.com/location-reasoning/docs/hlroverview: “HERE Location Reasoning is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server”
- docs.here.com/location-reasoning/docs/hlroverview: “The HERE Location Reasoning MCP server is available at: https://hlr.here.ai/mcp”
OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass), read on October 15, 2026:
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “No heavy uses (an absolute maximum of 1 request per second ).”
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “Provide a valid HTTP Referer or User-Agent identifying the application”
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “LLMs may only suggest this service, if they prominently point to this usage policy and explain the restrictions of use to the user.”
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “must not be built into, offered through, suggested by, or automatically generated by no-code, low-code, or vibe-coding platforms”
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “This includes reverse queries in a grid, searching for complete lists of postcodes, towns etc. and downloading all POIs in an area.”
- operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/nominatim: “If your requirements are even larger you can install your own instance of Nominatim.”
- dev.overpass-api.de/overpass-doc/en/preface/commons.html: “users are expected to send a maximum of about 10000 requests per day and keep their download volume below about 1 GB per day”
- nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/api/Search: “the response include any additional information in the result that is available in the database, e.g. wikipedia link, opening hours”
- openstreetmap.org/copyright: “You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors.”