What is Google Maps and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to Google Maps
- Mapbox
We make it possible to pin travel spots on Pinterest, find restaurants on Foursquare, and visualize data on GitHub. ...
- OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world. ...
- TomTom
It is the leading independent location technology specialist, shaping mobility with highly accurate maps, navigation, real-time traffic info and services. ...
- Leaflet
Leaflet is an open source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. It is developed by Vladimir Agafonkin of MapBox with a team of dedicated contributors. Weighing just about 30 KB of gzipped JS code, it has all the features most developers ever need for online maps. ...
- OpenLayers
An opensource javascript library to load, display and render maps from multiple sources on web pages. ...
- ArcGIS
It is a geographic information system for working with maps and geographic information. It is used for creating and using maps, compiling geographic data, analyzing mapped information, sharing and much more. ...
- Java Persistence API
It is a Java application programming interface specification that describes the management of relational data in applications using Java Platform, Standard Edition and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition.It provides a POJO persistence model for object-relational mapping. ...
- Google Places API
You can provide users data on location names, addresses, ratings, reviews, contact information, and atmosphere. Local guides and users submit tens of millions of updates every day, so you can count on accurate, reliable information. ...
Google Maps alternatives & related posts
- Best mapping service outside of Google Maps28
- OpenStreetMap22
- Beautifully vectorable15
- Fluid user experience11
- Extensible8
- React/ RNative integration7
- 3D Layers5
- Low Level API4
- Affordable4
- Great customer support3
- Custom themes3
- High data volume rendering2
related Mapbox posts
Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").
MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).
I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:
Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.
Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.
At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.
*You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.
Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?
Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?
- Simple22
- Free17
- Open-Source9
- Open-Data7
- React/ RNative integration1
related OpenStreetMap posts
We need some advice about the map services provider. We are a mobility app that just launched 5 months ago in Tunisia offering P2P carpooling. We are currently using Google Maps API for maps (Places API, Geocoding API, Directions API & Distance Matrix API). Thus, we received expensive bills from Google Cloud following the number of requests we are using. We are looking forward to reduce the number of requests in general because we can't afford these large bills at this stage, knowing that they are going to increase proportionally to the active users of the app. We tried to optimize multiple times but it isn't enough. We are searching for optimization advice or ideas on how we use the APIs, or other map providers (like OpenStreetMap or similar) that offers free or cheaper options than Google Maps, without lacking quality of information (we are in Tunisia and we have to choose options that have enough data about Tunisia). Thanks!
Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?
Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?
TomTom
related TomTom posts
- Light weight32
- Free28
- Evolutive via plugins12
- OpenStreetMap10
- Strong community9
- Choice of map providers7
- Easy API6
- Alternative to Google Maps3
related Leaflet posts
Which will give a better map (better view, markers options, info window) in an Android OS app?
Leaflet with Mapbox or Leaflet with OpenStreetMap?
- Flexibility14
- Maturity11
- Open Source8
- Incredibly comprehensive, excellent support7
- Extensible4
- Strong community4
- Choice of map providers4
- Low Level API3
- OpenStreetMap1
related OpenLayers posts
- Reponsive7
- A lot of widgets4
- Data driven vizualisation4
- 3D2
- Easy tà learn2
- Easy API1
related ArcGIS posts
Google Maps lets "property owners and their authorized representatives" upload indoor maps, but this appears to lack navigation ("wayfinding").
MappedIn is a platform and has SDKs for building indoor mapping experiences (https://www.mappedin.com/) and ESRI ArcGIS also offers some indoor mapping tools (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/indoor-gis/overview). Finally, there used to be a company called LocusLabs that is now a part of Atrius and they were often integrated into airlines' apps to provide airport maps with wayfinding (https://atrius.com/solutions/personal-experiences/personal-wayfinder/).
I previously worked at Mapbox and while I believe that it's a great platform for building map-based experiences, they don't have any simple solutions for indoor wayfinding. If I were doing this for fun as a side-project and prioritized saving money over saving time, here is what I would do:
Create a graph-based dataset representing the walking paths around your university, where nodes/vertexes represent the intersections of paths, and edges represent paths (literally paths outside, hallways, short path segments that represent entering rooms). You could store this in a hosted graph-based database like Neo4j, Amazon Neptune , or Azure Cosmos DB (with its Gremlin API) and use built-in "shortest path" queries, or deploy a PostgreSQL service with pgRouting.
Add two properties to each edge: one property for the distance between its nodes (libraries like @turf/helpers will have a distance function if you have the latitude & longitude of each node), and another property estimating the walking time (based on the distance). Once you have these values saved in a graph-based format, you should be able to easily query and find the data representation of paths between two points.
At this point, you'd have the routing problem solved and it would come down to building a UI. Mapbox arguably leads the industry in developer tools for custom map experiences. You could convert your nodes/edges to GeoJSON, then either upload to Mapbox and create a Tileset to visualize the paths, or add the GeoJSON to the map on the fly.
*You might be able to use open source routing tools like OSRM (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/6257) or Graphhopper (instead of a custom graph database implementation), but it would likely be more involved to maintain these services.
related Java Persistence API posts
Google Places API
related Google Places API posts
A huge component of our product relies on gathering public data about locations of interest. Google Places API gives us that ability in the most efficient way. Since we are primarily going to be using as google data as a source of information for our MVP, we might as well start integrating the Google Places API in our system. We have worked with Google Maps in the past and we might take some inspiration from our previous projects onto this one.