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Google Maps vs OpenStreetMap: What are the differences?
What is Google Maps? Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery. Create rich applications and stunning visualisations of your data, leveraging the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of Google Maps and a modern web platform that scales as you grow.
What is OpenStreetMap? The free editable map of the whole world. 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.
Google Maps and OpenStreetMap can be categorized as "Mapping APIs" tools.
Some of the features offered by Google Maps are:
- Maps Image APIs
- Places API
- Web Services
On the other hand, OpenStreetMap provides the following key features:
- Local Knowledge
- Community Driven
- Open Data
"Free" is the primary reason why developers consider Google Maps over the competitors, whereas "Simple" was stated as the key factor in picking OpenStreetMap.
Google, Lyft, and Square are some of the popular companies that use Google Maps, whereas OpenStreetMap is used by Apple, Foursquare, and MapLarge. Google Maps has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1975 company stacks & 1093 developers stacks; compared to OpenStreetMap, which is listed in 38 company stacks and 15 developer stacks.
From a StackShare Community member: "We're a team of two starting to write a mobile app. The app will heavily rely on maps and this is where my partner and I are not seeing eye-to-eye. I would like to go with an open source solution like OpenStreetMap that is used by Apple & Foursquare. He would like to go with Google Maps since more apps use it and has better support (according to him). Mapbox is also an option but I don’t know much about it."
Google MapsGoogle Maps is best because it is practically free (they give you $300 in free credits per month and it's really hard to go over the free tier unless you really mean business) and it's the best!
OpenStreetMapI use OpenStreetMap because that has a strong community. It takes some time to catch up with Google Maps, but OpenStreetMap will become great solution.
OpenStreetMapI use OpenStreetMap because i have the control of the environment, using Docker containers or bare-metal servers.
Google MapsI use Google Maps because it has a lot of great features such as Google's rich APIs, geolocation functions, navigation search feature, street map view, auto-generated 3D city map.
Pros of Google Maps
- Free250
- Address input through maps api136
- Sharable Directions81
- Google Earth47
- Unique45
- Custom maps designing3
Pros of OpenStreetMap
- Simple20
- Free16
- Open-Source9
- Open-Data7
- React/ RNative integration1
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Cons of Google Maps
- Google Attributions and logo3
- Only map allowed alongside google place autocomplete1
Cons of OpenStreetMap
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What is Google Maps?
What is OpenStreetMap?
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