Wow. I teach a course of mobile programming with Android. Now I will have to remove the section explaining Google maps API as I cannot ask my students to add their Credit card info online just for the course... Any other free alternative?
You can construct API keys that are restricted to an Android signing key, use it for the duration of the class, and then revoke it after the course work is done.
Mapbox also has Android implementations, not sure if you can sign up without a credit card though.
Note - I work at Mapbox, on accounts
I'm an ex-Mapzen alum who runs https://geocode.earth. We don't have a permanent free tier at the moment (our geocoder is solid but the service is new!), but we want to find ways to contribute to the community where we can. I would be happy to set up a temporary free tier on our service for one of your classes.
Shoot me an email, julian at geocode dot earth and we can figure something out