SerpApi Google Maps API vs Overture Maps Places for AI agents
SerpApi Google Maps API is a third-party API that scrapes Google Maps search results and returns them as structured JSON. 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
- SerpApi Google Maps API: Getting Google Maps listing data (phone, website, hours, ratings) as JSON without Google's billing or display rules. Legal risk from the scraping model sits partly with you.
- 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
| SerpApi Google Maps API | Overture Maps Places | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Whatever Google Maps returns for a query and location (ll parameter), including local businesses, place details and reviews. | 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 local_results with fields such as title, address, phone, website, hours, rating, reviews and description, plus place IDs. | 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 SerpApi account and API key. | Nothing: no account or key. Read from public Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage. |
| Free | Free plan: 250 searches a month (50 an hour throughput). Cached, errored and failed searches are not counted. | No key needed, and its pages state no price |
| Paid | Starter costs $25 a month for 1,000 searches. Developer costs $75 a month for 5,000. Production costs $150 a month for 15,000. | Not stated on its pages |
| Acting on a result | Results include the business phone and website as shown on Google Maps. There is no messaging. | 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 | Follows Google Maps. SerpApi warns that results are not guaranteed to fall within the location given. | Global. Release 2026-09-23.1, published monthly. |
| MCP server | SerpApi MCP Server, hosted at https://mcp.serpapi.com/mcp (API key) and open source at https://github.com/serpapi/serpapi-mcp | 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 SerpApi Google Maps API and Openpath vs Overture Maps Places.
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use SerpApi Google Maps API?
A SerpApi account and API key.
Is SerpApi Google Maps API free?
Free plan: 250 searches a month (50 an hour throughput). Cached, errored and failed searches are not counted.
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.
SerpApi Google Maps API, read on October 15, 2026:
- serpapi.com/google-maps-api: “Scrape Google Maps data with our Google Maps API.”
- serpapi.com/google-maps-api: “Results are not guaranteed to be within the geographic location provided in the ll parameter.”
- serpapi.com/google-maps-api: “"phone": "(646) 559-4878", "website": "http://joespizzanyc.com/"”
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Free $ 0 / month Get Started 250 searches per month 50 throughput per hour”
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Starter $ 25 / month Get Started 1,000 searches per month”
- serpapi.com/pricing: “Only successful searches are counted toward your monthly searches. Cached, errored, and failed searches are not.”
- serpapi.com/legal: “SerpApi assumes liability for the lawful collection of public search data ... but not for how that data is ultimately used.”
- github.com/serpapi/serpapi-mcp: “SerpApi MCP Server is available as a hosted service at mcp.serpapi.com”
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 .”