Stadia Maps Blog

Product updates and geospatial insights from the Stadia Maps team about maps, geocoding & search, and routing & navigation.

Choosing the Right Geocoding Endpoint

Forward or reverse? Search, structured, or autocomplete? A practical guide to picking the right Stadia Maps geocoding endpoint for your application.

September 8, 2026·7 min read

Water Labels Reworked: Cleaner Names, Smarter Placement, and Straits at Last

We overhauled water name labeling across our basemaps with better relevance in the tiles, cleaner names for seas and oceans, centered lake labels, and straits.

August 24, 2026·6 min read

The Hidden Cost of Search: Why Your Geocoding Bill is Higher Than It Should Be

Google, Mapbox, AWS, and ESRI charge 6-8x more to store a geocoding result than to query it. Here's why the caching tax exists, and how Stadia Maps avoids it.

July 20, 2026·4 min read

The Open Data Superpower: Why Global Search is Moving Beyond Proprietary Silos

Stadia Maps geocoding and search APIs ingest continuous open data for rapid updates, multilingual search, and precision reverse geocoding.

July 8, 2026·4 min read

When Google Maps Killed its Heatmap API, Here's What it Costs You

Google's Maps JavaScript API HeatmapLayer was deprecated in May 2025 and removed in May 2026. Here's what broke, why it happened, and how to migrate to MapLibre GL JS with Stadia Maps tiles.

July 1, 2026·5 min read

The Stadia Maps Newsletter №15 – June 2026

Two new leaders join Stadia Maps, updated changelog with RSS feed, and latest blog posts on water features, routing privacy, and transportation alternatives.

June 30, 2026·3 min read

Two Leaders Join Stadia Maps and What This Means for the People Who Build on Us

Rob Yoegel joins as Head of Growth and Rick Myers leads Success and Support at Stadia Maps, bringing Linode's developer-first playbook to location infrastructure.

June 24, 2026·5 min read

Precision Meets Privacy: Elevating the Consumer Search Experience

Stadia Maps geocoding API delivers structured search, reverse geocoding, and autocomplete across 1B+ locations — no user tracking, no ad-network bias.

June 17, 2026·4 min read

The Invisible Costs of Routing: Privacy, Pricing, and Avoiding the "MAU" Trap

Compare mapping SDKs on privacy and pricing. Stadia Maps is private by design and bills on usage only — no data harvesting, no MAU fees.

June 10, 2026·5 min read

How We Fixed Water Feature Rendering Across All Zoom Levels in Our Basemaps

Mixing Natural Earth and OSM data across zoom levels broke rivers, coastlines, and islands. Here's how a single Overture Maps dataset fixed it.

June 4, 2026·5 min read

We Updated Our Changelog (Yes, Really)

Catch up on everything Stadia Maps shipped since mid-2024, such as traffic-influenced routing, Geocoding v2 with hundreds of millions of new POIs, a 37M km² satellite imagery update, and new mobile SDKs. Plus, subscribe via RSS to stay current.

June 2, 2026·2 min read

Beyond the Car: Routing for the Other 90% of Transport

Trucks, e-bikes, and LSVs need more than car-first routing. How Stadia Maps uses Valhalla and OpenStreetMap for modal-specific routing APIs.

May 26, 2026·4 min read

Why Basic OpenStreetMap Routing Needs Real-Time Traffic

OpenStreetMap has a world-class road network, but no real-time traffic. Why algorithmic ETAs fail in logistics, and how TomTom-powered routing fixes it.

May 12, 2026·4 min read

2026 Satellite Imagery Update: 37 Million km² at 30cm Resolution

The 2026 Alidade Satellite update: 37M km² at 30cm resolution, seamless mosaics for Japan, Nigeria, Mexico, and the UAE, and average imagery age of 1.6 years.

April 27, 2026·5 min read

75 Million More Addresses: Expanding Geocoding Precision

75 million new rooftop-accurate addresses from OpenAddresses, 3 million Foursquare POIs, and structured address fields (house_number, street, unit) on the v1 API.

April 27, 2026·5 min read

Traffic-Influenced Routing Is Here (Public Preview)

Live and historical TomTom traffic now powers routing, optimized routing, map matching, isochrones, and matrices across 80+ countries. Public preview.

April 14, 2026·3 min read

AI Tools for API Companies: 4 Design Principles for AI-Native API Consumption

Four design principles for MCP servers and AI tools that models actually use: contextual descriptions, token frugality, AI-readable outputs, focused tools.

August 7, 2025·9 min read

AI Tools for API Companies: AI Needs Context, or How Our Auto-Generation Failed Spectacularly

Auto-generating an MCP server from OpenAPI specs seemed obvious — and failed. What we learned about AI-native API consumption and MCP tool design.

August 1, 2025·6 min read

Enriching Geocoding & Search: More Data, Smarter Deduplication, and Forward & Reverse v2

Geocoding v2 Forward and Reverse endpoints, smarter cross-source deduplication, multi-language fixes, and 8M more Foursquare OS Places POIs.

July 1, 2025·5 min read

Introducing Stadia Maps Geocoding & Search v2: Supercharge Your Search

Geocoding & Search v2: 14M+ new places and addresses, faster responses, 80% lower autocomplete costs, and forward geocoding on every plan — including Free.

April 8, 2025·6 min read

2025 Satellite Imagery Map Refresh

The 2025 Alidade Satellite refresh delivers 10x more 30cm imagery, 54% global coverage at 50cm, full 1.5m coverage, and imagery no more than a few years old.

March 7, 2025·3 min read

Announcing Foursquare OS Places Beta

Foursquare OS Places joins Stadia Maps geocoding as a beta source: millions of new POIs, 250,000+ localized place names, and smarter fuzzy search.

February 19, 2025·3 min read

Ferrostar: Building a Cross-Platform Navigation SDK in Rust (Part 2 - iOS Packaging)

How we cross-compile Rust for iOS, package an XCFramework, and publish a Swift Package — Part 2 of the Ferrostar navigation SDK deep dive.

December 3, 2024·12 min read

Autocomplete Search for SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose

Add location autocomplete search to iOS and Android apps in a few lines of code with customizable SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose views from Stadia Maps.

October 14, 2024·3 min read

Our SwiftUI DSL Is Joining the MapLibre Family

The MapLibre SwiftUI DSL, started at Stadia Maps, is now an official MapLibre project, bringing first-class SwiftUI support to MapLibre on iOS.

October 7, 2024·3 min read

Fall 2024 Credit Schedule Updates

Increased matrix element limits, navigation aids with OSRM support for routing, and adjustments to the credit schedule.

September 12, 2024·5 min read

Bulk Geocoding API Is Now Available

Geocode up to 5,000 addresses in one HTTP request: forward and structured queries, streamed results, and no extra credits or fees.

August 23, 2024·4 min read

Official SDK for PHP is Now Available

The Stadia Maps PHP SDK brings geocoding, routing, elevation, and time zone APIs to PHP via Composer, fully open source and generated from our OpenAPI spec.

July 26, 2024·3 min read

Custom Markers and POST Support for Static Maps

Add custom marker images (up to 5 per request, 128px) to static maps, and send complex requests as JSON via POST to bypass URL length limits.

May 14, 2024·4 min read

2024 Satellite Imagery Map Refresh

The 2024 imagery refresh brings vibrant global color, 4M km² more 50cm coverage, new 30cm imagery in major cities, and refreshed imagery portfolio-wide.

April 12, 2024·4 min read