Outscraper vs Overture Maps Places for AI agents
Outscraper is a third-party service and API that scrapes Google Maps places in bulk and returns them as structured records. 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
- Outscraper: Bulk extraction of Google Maps business lists, such as lead lists.
- 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
| Outscraper | Overture Maps Places | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Google Maps places by query (for example "restaurants brooklyn usa") or by place ID, plus reviews and photos. | 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 (exports also in CSV, Excel and Parquet) with fields such as name, site, phone, address, rating, hours and, with enrichments, emails and social links. | 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 Outscraper account and API key. | Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage. |
| Free | Not stated on its pages | No key needed, and its pages state no price |
| Acting on a result | Records include the business phone and website from Google Maps, and enrichments can add emails. There is no messaging through Outscraper. | Records can include phones, websites and social links. There is no messaging; it is static data. |
| Limits on keeping or showing results | Not stated on its pages | 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 | Not stated on its pages | Global. Release 2026-09-23.1, published monthly. |
| MCP server | outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server on GitHub (https://github.com/outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server), run with npx -y outscraper-mcp and OUTSCRAPER_API_KEY. | 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 Outscraper and Openpath vs Overture Maps Places.
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use Outscraper?
An Outscraper account and API key.
Is Outscraper free?
Its pages listed no free use when we read them on October 15, 2026.
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.
Outscraper, read on October 15, 2026:
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-python: “client = OutscraperClient(api_key='SECRET_API_KEY')”
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-python: “"site": "http://www.colonienyc.com/", "phone": "+1 718-855-7500"”
- github.com/outscraper/outscraper-mcp-server: “Official Outscraper MCP server for AI agents: Google Maps scraping, business data enrichment, lead generation”
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 .”