
Overview
At a high level there are three major differences:

We use open data

Affordable pricing

Technical differences
Before we dive in ...

Built with open data
Because we use open data - see the full list of datasources - you're able to do much more with the geocoding results.
You can store the results as long as you like (even if you stop working with us). You can display our results on any map you like, while Google results can only be displayed on a Google map.
You can use the results publicly or behind a firewall.
Finally, when you come across a data problem in the data you can fix it. With proprietary services like Google all you can do is hope they eventually fix it.
Read our detailed look at the benefits of open data.

Pricing
You can see our prices on our pricing page, and here's detailed comparison of Google maps geocoding pricing versus OpenCage, but beyond the fact that we are a much more affordable option, you should also note that our entire approach to pricing is different.
Google requires a credit card at sign-up. We do not.
Our tiered usage limits are "soft", which means you will never have pricing surpries. When a customer reach their daily limit nothing happens; they are not charged more, everything keeps working as before. Short-term spikes are no issue. If your daily average over the course of a month is over the usage limit of your tier, we will ask you to move up from the next billing period.
We win by being a stable, long-term partners for our clients, not by running a meter when they suddenly need a bit more.

Technical differences in API request and response
Please take a look at our API documentation for the full details (don't worry it is a single page), but here we attempt to layout some of the key conceptual differences between the two services.
Query Parameters |
Both services require an API key, supplied in the
Google requires an
See the request format documentation where you can also learn about the various optional parameters we support. |
Output Formats |
While Google only supports JSON and XML, we support JSON, XML, and GeoJSON. |
Structured Queries |
Google supports structured queries. We do not. This is intentional, our goal is to keep the service as simple as possible for developers to comprehend and get productive with our service. Please follow the steps laid out in our guide to query formatting. |
Annotations |
By default we provide lot of other relevant information about the location of each result, we call these annotations. Google does not. |
Address Components |
Both services return different components of the location
hierarchy, Google does this in a field called
The comprehensiveness and values may differ between the two services. Learn more about our components, and how we use them to create a well formatted local address string. |
Location Type |
Google returns the type of match in a field called
We provide a
confidence score
that tells you the size of the result.
Separately we also provide the
|
One more thing ...
One final point - many clients tell us they like our approach to privacy, and that they aren't excited about sharing even more data with Google.
We agree!