unmap as an alternative to Radar

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. Radar's terms bar caching or storing address and POI data from its geocoding, autocomplete and place search APIs for more than 30 days, and bar using those APIs to build an address or POI database.
• You want to start building today, on your own. Sign up, create a key and build on the free dev plan, with no sales call; Indie and Growth are monthly plans you pick yourself (Plans and limits). Radar's pricing says it does not offer a free tier: new teams start with a technical validation period, and its test keys are for testing and non-production use.
• 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 /isochrone returns the area reachable within up to four time bands (Isochrone), and mode=transit routes and draws travel-time areas on scheduled Canadian transit (Transit routing). In Radar's API reference an isochrone is a geofence type, not an API that returns a travel-time area, and we found no transit routing there.
• 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-W5 is an ordinary search query (Legal land).

When Radar is the better fit

• You also need geofencing, trip tracking or fraud checks. Radar sells geofences, trip tracking and location-fraud checks through the same API as its geocoding and routing, so one vendor covers both (pricing). unmap is a maps, search and routing API, with no geofencing or tracking.
• Most of your volume is geocodes and routes. Radar's Core Maps rate starts at $0.50 per 1,000 calls and covers forward, reverse and IP geocoding, address autocomplete, static maps, distance, directions and matrix (pricing). One flat rate across those calls is simple to forecast, and it is below unmap's overage rate on either paid plan.
• You validate US or Canadian addresses. Radar offers address validation for US and Canadian addresses to enterprise customers, at its Premium Maps rate (API reference, pricing). unmap has no address validation API.
• 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 Radar's documentation for the countries you need.

How the bill compares

The table above is Radar's published starting rate for each product, as read on the date shown. Radar has no free tier. It bills usage on an annual agreement, with a committed quota allotted month by month, and its sales team sets any discount from the starting rates (pricing). The table has no maps row: the pricing page prices static and satellite maps, and we found no price there for an interactive map. Besides the 30-day storage limit above, Radar's terms require a map that uses Radar's designs, data or software to show the Radar logo and a text attribution.

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.

For search and routing the units line up: a geocode, an autocomplete request or a route is one call on both sides. At Radar's starting rate, 2,000,000 geocodes a month come to $1,000 before any discount, and Growth includes them for US$99. Beyond a plan's included calls it runs the other way: each further 1,000 costs less at Radar's starting rate than at unmap's overage.

Maps are where the units part. On unmap 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 1,000 first paints are about 40,000 calls, from the same pool as your searches. A matrix differs the other way. Radar bills it per element, origins times destinations, and a 10 by 10 /matrix request on unmap is one call.

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.