When unmap is the better fit
- You want to keep what you fetch. Our terms let you cache maps and geocoding results permissively, and what you have cached stays yours after you cancel. LocationIQ's terms let a free account cache responses for 48 hours, tie a paid account's caching to staying a customer, and do not allow map tiles to be cached on a server.
- Your users search in Canada, in either official language. One record carries its English and French names, plus Indigenous-language names where the source data has them, and a query typed in Inuktitut syllabics finds the place. See Languages.
- You draw travel-time areas or route transit riders.
GET /isochronereturns the area reachable within up to four time bands (Isochrone), andmode=transitroutes and draws travel-time areas on scheduled Canadian transit (Transit routing). LocationIQ's documentation has directions, matrix, map matching and optimize APIs, and we found no isochrone or transit routing in it. - You search by legal land description. With the Legal Land add-on, a Dominion Land Survey or NTS description such as
NW-25-24-1-W5is an ordinary search query (Legal land). - You want maps, search and routing on your first paid plan. All three unmap plans include the core APIs, maps, geocoding, routing and Optimize among them (Plans and limits). LocationIQ's pricing leaves routing out of Maps Lite, its first paid plan, so a paid plan with directions starts at Developer.
When LocationIQ is the better fit
- You only need a map and an address search. LocationIQ's pricing lists Maps Lite with map views and geocoding and without routing. unmap has no maps-only plan: every plan meters all of its APIs from one pool.
- You want to choose where your requests are served. The same pricing page lists US and EU datacenters, and dedicated AWS endpoints on Business Plus.
- Your traffic carries a lot of failed requests. LocationIQ does not charge for failed requests (pricing). On unmap a
400for a bad parameter and a204for an empty tile both count as a call; only a request rejected at the door (401,403,429) does not (What counts as a call). - You search or route outside Canada. unmap's basemap is worldwide, but search and routing cover Canada only, and a route that leaves the country is a
422(Coverage). If your users search or travel past the border, check LocationIQ's documentation for the countries you need.
How the bill compares
The table above is LocationIQ's first paid plan for each product, as read on the date shown. LocationIQ sells each plan as a daily request quota, and only its larger plans as a monthly one (pricing). Its free plan allows limited commercial use and needs a visible link back to LocationIQ on your page; its paid plans drop the link.
unmap has one meter instead. Every request is one call, tiles included, and every API draws from the same pool. Three bulk paths count work, not requests: batch geocoding is one call per non-blank query, a hosted batch job is one call per eligible row, and Optimize is one call per shipment a successful solve performs. The dev plan is free and for building, not production. Browser calls from localhost are not counted, except Optimize, which counts from every origin. Server-side calls and Optimize draw on 10,000 included calls a month. Indie is US$19 a month for 250,000 calls, then US$1.00 per 1,000. Growth is US$99 a month for 2,000,000 calls, then US$0.75 per 1,000. Plans and limits has the detail.
The units differ most for maps. LocationIQ counts a map view as one request, and a map view stands for 16 raster tiles or 4 vector tiles (pricing). On unmap every tile is its own call: a map's first paint is about 40 calls, almost all of them tiles, and after that MapLibre and the browser serve most tiles from cache. So the same screen of tiles is fewer requests on LocationIQ than calls on unmap.
The periods differ too. A daily quota has to fit your busiest day. unmap's included calls are counted per calendar month, so a launch day and a quiet Sunday draw on the same monthly pool.
For search the units line up: a search, a reverse geocode or an autocomplete request is one request on LocationIQ and one call on unmap. Autocomplete is a call per request on unmap, so debounce the keystrokes. A 10 by 10 /matrix request on unmap is one call, whatever the provider counts for the same grid.
To estimate your own bill, start from about 40 calls for a first paint on an empty browser cache. Panning and zooming add tiles, and return visits fetch fewer. Then add your searches and routes and set the total against a plan's included calls.
