TomTom Search API vs OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass) for AI agents
TomTom Search API is a family of TomTom location search APIs: the Orbis-based Places Search API (Suggest, Discover, Details) is now recommended, and the older Search API is labelled previous-generation. Free, donation-run public servers for searching OpenStreetMap data: Nominatim for geocoding and place search, Overpass for querying OSM objects.
The short answer
- TomTom Search API: Navigation-grade POI search with a real no-card free tier and EU-priced pay-as-you-go. Strong in automotive and routing contexts.
- 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
| TomTom Search API | OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass) | |
|---|---|---|
| Searches | Addresses and points of interest (POIs) on TomTom Orbis Maps, or on TomTom Maps for the legacy Search API. | OpenStreetMap data worldwide: addresses, places and mapped POIs. |
| Returns | JSON (Discover returns a results array). POI results include a title, address, GeoJSON position, poiTypes (categories), contacts (phones and websites) and opening hours. | 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 free TomTom developer account and API key. No credit card is needed until you add prepaid credit. | No account or key. Nominatim requires a valid User-Agent or Referer that identifies your app, and visible attribution. |
| Free | Places Search API: 5,000 Discover and 5,000 Details requests a month, plus 10,000 Suggest. Legacy Search API: 2,500 a month. The free tier does not expire. | 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 | Places Search API Discover costs EUR 18.00 per 1,000 (5K–100K), Details EUR 12.00 per 1,000 and Suggest EUR 1.00 per 1,000. The legacy Search API costs EUR 3.00 per 1,000 (2.5K–100K). Billing is prepaid credit. | No paid tier. Heavy users are told to run their own instance or use commercial third-party providers. |
| Acting on a result | Discover results can include phone numbers and websites. 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 | Caching or storing Results is prohibited except in clients, within cache-control header max-age. Caching to serve multiple users is not allowed. Logo and copyright attribution is required. | 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 | The Portal Terms forbid applying ML or AI to the Licensed Products in a way that makes them redundant. They also forbid using them with any ML/AI process where the information would be stored in a "Public Reference Data Set". | 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 | The market list (search on TomTom Orbis Maps) marks POI coverage per country, including the United States. TomTom says markets not listed are not supported. | Worldwide OpenStreetMap data. POI completeness depends on volunteer mapping. |
| MCP server | TomTom Maps MCP Server, remote at https://mcp.tomtom.com/maps (public preview). Open source at https://github.com/tomtom-international/tomtom-maps-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 TomTom Search API and Openpath vs OpenStreetMap (Nominatim and Overpass).
Questions people ask
What do I need before I can use TomTom Search API?
A free TomTom developer account and API key. No credit card is needed until you add prepaid credit.
Is TomTom Search API free?
Places Search API: 5,000 Discover and 5,000 Details requests a month, plus 10,000 Suggest. Legacy Search API: 2,500 a month. The free tier does not expire.
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.
TomTom Search API, read on October 15, 2026:
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Places Search API Discover ... Free Up to 5K Tier 1 5K–100K € 18.00”
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Search API Serve search results using TomTom's previous-generation map format. For new projects we recommend Places Search API.”
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Free Up to 2.5K Tier 1 2.5K–100K € 3.00”
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “The more you use, the less you pay per 1,000 requests”
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “Free means free — no time limit, no credit card required.”
- docs.tomtom.com/pricing: “You only need a payment method when you're ready to add prepaid credit and go beyond the free monthly allowance.”
- docs.tomtom.com/places-search-api/documentation/places-search/discover: “Delivers fully resolved location or discoverAction results based on complete input criteria.”
- docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “The caching or storing of any Results shall be prohibited except that you may cache Results delivered by the Licensed Products provided that”
- docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “Nothing under Clause 11.4 entitles any form of caching for the purpose of scaling results to serve multiple clients or users.”
- docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “you agree to implement to the TomTom Copyright API in order to generate the applicable copyright and logo attribution”
- docs.tomtom.com/legal/terms-and-conditions: “would be stored or retained in any Public Reference Data Set by such machine learning, AI algorithm or other software related process”
- docs.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-mcp/documentation/overview: “The TomTom Maps Remote MCP Server is in public preview.”
- docs.tomtom.com/search-api/documentation/tomtom-orbis-maps/product-information/market-coverage: “If a market is missing in the following tables, it is not currently supported.”
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.”