Mapbox Search Box API vs Overture Maps Places for AI agents
Mapbox Search Box API is Mapbox's search API for addresses, places and POIs, with interactive (/suggest + /retrieve), text (/forward), category and reverse endpoints. 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
- Mapbox Search Box API: Cheap autocomplete-style place and address search inside map apps, with a first-party hosted MCP server.
- 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
| Mapbox Search Box API | Overture Maps Places | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Addresses, places and points of interest, including category search such as "coffee shops around me". | 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 features with name, address, coordinates, POI categories, mapbox_id and optional metadata such as phone, website, open hours, rating and photos. Each response includes an attribution string. | 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 Mapbox account and access token. You can sign up without a credit card, but you get trial usage limits until you add a payment method. | Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage. |
| Free | Introductory preview pricing: 500 interactive sessions a month and 50,000 /category or /reverse requests a month. The page also shows a "Standard pricing" table (2,500 and 25,000 free), and which table applies when was not stated in the text read. | No key needed, and its pages state no price |
| Paid | Sessions: $3.00 per 1,000 under the introductory preview pricing, or $11.50 per 1,000 under the standard pricing. /category and /reverse: $1.00 per 1,000 (intro) or $1.70 (standard). | Not stated on its pages |
| Acting on a result | Retrieved POIs can include phone and website in metadata. 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 | All Search Box results are for temporary use only. Storing position data requires contacting Mapbox sales. | 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. |
| Coverage | Global. The docs have a supported-geographies section that was not reviewed in detail. | Global. Release 2026-09-23.1, published monthly. |
| MCP server | Mapbox MCP Server, hosted at https://mcp.mapbox.com/mcp (OAuth) and open source at https://github.com/mapbox/mcp-server. The search tools use the Search Box API. | 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 Mapbox Search Box API and Openpath vs Overture Maps Places.
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Mapbox Search Box API?
A Mapbox account and access token. You can sign up without a credit card, but you get trial usage limits until you add a payment method.
Is Mapbox Search Box API free?
Introductory preview pricing: 500 interactive sessions a month and 50,000 /category or /reverse requests a month. The page also shows a "Standard pricing" table (2,500 and 25,000 free), and which table applies when was not stated in the text read.
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.
Mapbox Search Box API, read on October 15, 2026:
- mapbox.com/pricing: “Introductory preview pricing* Monthly sessions Up to 500 501 - 100,000 ... Cost per 1,000 Free $3.00”
- mapbox.com/pricing: “Standard pricing Monthly requests Up to 2,500 2,501 - 100,000 ... Cost per 1,000 Free $11.50”
- mapbox.com/pricing: “Request to /category and /reverse endpoints are billed on a per-request basis.”
- mapbox.com/pricing: “Monthly requests Up to 50,000 50,001 - 500,000 ... Cost per 1,000 Free $1.00”
- mapbox.com/pricing: “A session includes 50 /suggest calls, and 1 /retrieve call, and it will automatically expire after 2 minutes of inactivity.”
- docs.mapbox.com/accounts/guides/signup: “Quick sign-up without a credit card gives you access to Mapbox services with trial usage limits.”
- docs.mapbox.com/api/search/search-box: “all data returned by the Search Box API endpoints is only available for temporary use”
- docs.mapbox.com/api/search/search-box: “"metadata" : { "phone" : "PHONE_NUMBER" , "website" : "WEBSITE_URL" , "open_hours"”
- docs.mapbox.com/api/guides/mcp-server: “This endpoint is available at https://mcp.mapbox.com/mcp”
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 .”