The free tier is rarely the expensive part. What costs you is the pricing model sitting underneath it, and that only shows up the month your product works.
Every major map API has a free tier. They differ far less in size than in what happens at the edge of one. Some stop serving. Some bill you automatically. Some move you to a subscription tier that costs several times what you were paying. Picking a free tier is really picking the billing model you inherit at scale, so that is what this page compares.
Key Takeaways
- The size of a free tier matters less than what happens when you exceed it. The three common behaviors are a hard stop, automatic overage billing, and a jump to the next subscription tier.
- Stadia Maps offers 200,000 credits per month free with no credit card required. Additional usage is off by default, so exceeding the limit returns errors rather than charges.
- Commercial use is not permitted on the Stadia Maps free plan. Development, testing, and demonstration are.
- Per Stadia Maps' published comparisons, Google Maps Platform runs tiered subscriptions at $100, $275, and $1,200 per month, where outgrowing a tier produces "a step-change in cost rather than a gradual one."
- Mapbox bills pay-as-you-go across multiple meters, which Stadia Maps' migration guide describes as "harder to forecast than flat subscription models, especially when usage spikes unexpectedly."
What Does "Free" Actually Mean on a Map API?
Free tiers come in three shapes, and the shape determines your risk.
Hard-limited. You get a fixed allowance. When it runs out, requests stop being served until the next billing period. Your bill cannot move, but your product can break. This is the safe default for side projects and the wrong default for anything with paying users, unless you have alerting in place.
Automatic overage. You get a fixed allowance, and past it the provider keeps serving and starts charging. Your product cannot break, but your bill can. This is where the stories about surprise invoices come from, and it is worst when usage is spiky or when a single page view triggers several billable calls.
Tiered subscription. You get a free allowance, and past it you move to a paid plan with its own included volume. Costs are predictable inside a tier and jump at the boundary between tiers.
None of these is inherently wrong. What matters is knowing which one you signed up for before the traffic arrives.
What Happens When You Exceed the Free Tier?
The figures below are drawn from the Stadia Maps migration guides. Each provider's terms are their own and change over time, so verify against current documentation before deciding.
| Pricing model | At the edge of the free tier | |
|---|---|---|
| Stadia Maps | Fixed credit pool per plan | Requests return 429 until the next cycle. Additional usage is opt-in |
| Tiered subscriptions over legacy pay-as-you-go | Outgrowing a tier is "a step-change in cost rather than a gradual one" | |
| Mapbox | Pay-as-you-go across multiple meters | Billing continues automatically; costs are "harder to forecast" when usage spikes |
| MapTiler | Two meters (sessions and tile requests) | Overage fees apply beyond included allowances, "requires monitoring multiple usage types" |
Sources: Google Maps alternatives, Mapbox alternatives, MapTiler alternatives, and the Stadia Maps pricing page.
Read that table as a question about your own tolerance. If an outage is worse than an invoice, automatic overage is a feature. If an unbudgeted invoice is worse than an outage, a hard limit is.
What Does the Entry Paid Tier Cost?
Free tiers end. What they hand you off to is the number that matters.
- Stadia Maps starts at $20/month for 1 million credits (Starter), then $80/month for 7.5 million (Standard), and $250/month for 25 million (Professional). Overage is opt-in at 3¢, 2¢, and 1.5¢ per 1,000 additional credits respectively.
- Google Maps Platform has run on tiered subscription plans since late 2025: Starter at $100/month, Essentials at $275/month, and Pro at $1,200/month, layered on top of legacy pay-as-you-go billing.
- Mapbox is pay-as-you-go, starting around $5 per 1,000 web map loads and stepping down at volume.
- MapTiler current plans are Free ($0), Flex ($30/month with 25,000 sessions included), and Custom (enterprise contract). The published jump is from Free at 5,000 sessions with limited storage to Flex at 25,000 sessions.
Two worked examples from the Stadia Maps migration guides, with their usage assumptions intact:
- At 50,000 map loads per month, the from-Google comparison puts Google at $150 and Stadia Maps at $20.
- At 100,000 map loads per month, the from-Mapbox comparison puts Mapbox at $255 and Stadia Maps at $80.
Those are scenarios at stated volumes, not averages. Your own mix of tiles, geocoding, and routing calls will move them.
What Is Actually in the Stadia Maps Free Tier?
Worth being specific, including about what it excludes.
What you get:
- 200,000 credits per month, drawn from one pool that covers map tiles, geocoding, routing, and the other APIs
- No credit card required to start
- Standard basemaps and the core APIs
- A 14-day trial of Stadia Maps Professional on every new account, after which the account stays on the free plan unless you upgrade
What you do not get:
- Commercial use is not allowed on the free plan. Per the Stadia Maps FAQs, usage counts as commercial if it is in a product or service that generates revenue, including through advertising, or if the organization using it is for-profit at all.
- Additional usage. The free plan has no overage option, which is why the limit behaves as a hard stop.
The carve-outs matter and are stated plainly in the FAQs: development and testing are fine on the free plan, and so are demonstration products and pages that exist purely to demonstrate. Non-commercial academic use is permitted with attribution.
This is a real difference from providers whose free tiers permit commercial use at low volume. If you are shipping a revenue-generating product, the honest comparison is between their free tier and the Stadia Maps Starter plan at $20/month, not between the two free tiers.
What Happens at the Stadia Maps Limit?
Concretely: you get HTTP 429 responses until the next billing cycle, or until you enable pay-as-you-go on a paid plan.
There is no fixed requests-per-second cap on registered API keys. Per the FAQs, the monthly credit allowance is the real constraint. Unregistered and abusive local-development traffic is throttled separately to prevent abuse.
The design intent is stated on the pricing page: "Fixed credit pools ensure costs stay exactly where you set them. Usage caps prevent billing shock and unexpected overages." Scaling is opt-in. Nothing bills you because your product had a good week.
The tradeoff is the one named above. A hard limit means a traffic spike degrades your product rather than your budget. Set up alerting on credit consumption regardless of which provider you choose.
Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Free Tier
A short due-diligence list that applies to any provider:
- What happens at the limit? Hard stop, automatic billing, or forced tier upgrade. Get this in writing before you build.
- How many meters am I being measured on? One pooled allowance is easier to forecast than separate counters for sessions, tile requests, and API calls.
- Is commercial use permitted? Free tiers that exclude commercial use are not options for a revenue-generating product, whatever the volume.
- How many billable calls does one user action trigger? A single map view can fire tile requests, a geocode, and a routing call. Model the user journey, not the endpoint.
- Can I store results? Storage rights are priced separately by most vendors, and they are governed by contract rather than by your plan's request volume. Check the Terms of Service before you architect around caching.
- Is a credit card required to start? This determines whether an accident can become a charge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a genuinely free map API?
Every major map API provider offers a free tier, including Stadia Maps, Google Maps Platform, Mapbox, and MapTiler. They differ in size, in whether commercial use is permitted, and most importantly in what happens when you exceed the allowance. Some stop serving requests, some bill automatically, and some move you to a paid subscription tier.
What is included in the Stadia Maps free plan?
The Stadia Maps free plan includes 200,000 credits per month drawn from a single pool covering map tiles, geocoding, routing, and other APIs. No credit card is required. Standard basemaps and core APIs are included. Every new account also gets a 14-day trial of Stadia Maps Professional, after which the account remains on the free plan unless upgraded.
Can I use a free map API commercially?
On Stadia Maps, no. Commercial use requires a paid subscription. Usage counts as commercial if it appears in a product or service that generates revenue, including through advertising, or if the organization is for-profit. Development, testing, demonstration pages, and non-commercial academic use are permitted on the free plan.
What happens when you exceed a free map API limit?
It depends on the provider's model. On Stadia Maps, requests return HTTP 429 responses until the next billing cycle, because additional usage is opt-in rather than automatic. Other providers bill automatically past the allowance or move you to the next subscription tier. Per Stadia Maps' migration guides, outgrowing a Google Maps Platform tier produces a step-change in cost rather than a gradual one.
How much does a map API cost after the free tier?
Stadia Maps starts at $20 per month for 1 million credits, rising to $80 for 7.5 million and $250 for 25 million. Google Maps Platform has run tiered subscriptions since late 2025 at $100, $275, and $1,200 per month. Mapbox is pay-as-you-go starting around $5 per 1,000 web map loads. MapTiler offers Flex at $30 per month with 25,000 sessions included.
Why do map API bills come as a surprise?
Usually because billing is metered automatically across several counters at once, so a single user action can trigger multiple billable calls. Stadia Maps' migration guide describes Mapbox as billing across map loads, tile requests, and API calls, which makes monthly costs harder to forecast when usage spikes. Fixed credit pools with opt-in overages remove that risk by capping spend at the plan limit.
Does Stadia Maps require a credit card for the free tier?
No. The free plan requires no payment method. A card is only needed when you upgrade to a paid plan, which is also what removes the hard credit limit and enables optional pay-as-you-go usage beyond your plan's included credits.
Where to Go Next
From the Blog
More on pricing models and hidden costs from the Stadia Maps blog:
- The Hidden Cost of Search: Why Your Geocoding Bill Is Higher Than It Should Be
- The Invisible Costs of Routing: Privacy, Pricing, and Avoiding the "MAU" Trap
- When Google Maps Killed Its Heatmap API, Here's What It Costs You
Location Platform
- Pricing and plan comparison for the full credit schedule and overage rates
- FAQs for acceptable use, rate limits, and what counts as commercial use
- Switch to Stadia Maps for migration guides
- Google Maps alternatives
- Mapbox alternatives
- MapTiler alternatives
- Terms of Service for the governing acceptable use and storage language