Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by scotchio | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

scotchio

Geocodio [1] is another really good service to look into too:

* Good free and premium paid service

* They've gone a bit above and beyond to provide examples/demos in all languages in their docs. Super easy for users

* Can process bulk/batch request super fast in parallel on your behalf

* Have a super cool front-end CSV upload tool built in React so non-programmers can geocode data in seconds

* Forward/reverse geocoding

* Also give Census data, congressional districts, state legislative districts, and even school districts

Full disclosure: I know the husband and wife founder. Very nice people

[1]: https://geocod.io

View on HN

LocationIQ wasn't meant to compete with paid offerings. It was merely a way for the team at Unwired Labs to give back to the OSM community. We think the good folks at OSM deserves a great free tier.

If geocoding needs are enterprise-grade / you are OK with spending a bit, you should look at Mapzen, OpenCage, and now, Geocodio.

I don't understand. You are "giving back" by creating a service where you make money.

Are you publishing your source code?

Excellent pricing on this. But i just ran my house on it and it was off by 10 houses while proclaiming perfect accuracy. The Google answer was exact. The other party was off by 1 house. Is this because of the underlying data from OSM?

Hi Tim. Mathias from geocod.io here. Can you please drop us a line at hello AT geocod.io would love to look into what happened there.

We're using Tiger/Line and Rooftop-level (through OpenAddresses) datasets under the hood. We do not use OSM as it's generally not optimized for geocoding.

It's a little odd to mention Tiger/Line and optimized for geocoding in the same sentence. Tiger/Line is specifically obscured to protect the anonymity of individuals that live in low density areas. It's de-optimized for geocoding before it is published for public access. It seems pretty likely that's the issue above.

Of course OSM is not a great source of addresses either, as it simply doesn't have data for so many regions.

USA and Canada only :( Ah well, can't have everything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com