Alternative POI Data Sources (No Scraping)
Alternative POI Data Sources
Section titled “Alternative POI Data Sources”Free or commercial POI databases that don’t require scraping Google Maps.
Overture Maps Foundation (64.8M POIs Free)
Section titled “Overture Maps Foundation (64.8M POIs Free)”Backed by Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, TomTom, Foursquare. The strongest free alternative to Google Maps data.
| Size | 64.8M places — Meta (~59.2M), Foursquare (~6.7M), Microsoft (~7.4M), AllThePlaces (~1.7M) |
| Fields | Names, categories (64+), phones, emails, websites, socials, addresses, brand, operating_status, confidence score, coordinates |
| Format | GeoParquet on S3 and Azure Blob. Python CLI, DuckDB SQL, browser Explorer |
| License | CDLA-Permissive-2.0 / ODbL (commercial use OK) |
| Limits | Monthly updates (not real-time). No reviews/photos. Thinner outside Western countries |
Warning: Reddit reports Places layer stopped updating as of Sept 2024 release. Verify current state.
Overture Places Guide | Downloads
Overture-Based API (Community-Built, 200x Cheaper)
Section titled “Overture-Based API (Community-Built, 200x Cheaper)”A developer built a Places API using Overture data + Rust/Axum + PostGIS. Free 5K/mo, $10/100K, $30/500K, $80/2M — vs Google’s ~$1,700 for 100K.
Other Alternative Sources
Section titled “Other Alternative Sources”| Source | POIs | Free Tier | Key Strength | Reviews? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap (Overpass API) | Varies | Unlimited, no key | Free, query any tag combo. Overpass Turbo | No |
| Foursquare Places | 100M+ | Commercial | Richest venue data, behavioral insights, check-ins | Tips only |
| HERE Technologies | Global, 400+ cats | 250K tx/mo | TripAdvisor ratings, EV/fuel data, chain ID | Via TripAdvisor |
| TomTom | ~100M, 180+ countries | 50K daily tx | Navigation-optimized, relevance scoring | No |
| Mapbox | Global | 100K req/mo | Polished SDKs | No |
| Geoapify | OSM-based, 400+ cats | 3K credits/day | Transparent pricing, can cache/store | No |
| Yelp Fusion API | Millions | 5K calls/day | 3 reviews max via API. Open Dataset: 8.6M reviews (academic) | 3 (API), 8.6M (dataset) |
| AllThePlaces | 20M+ | Unlimited (CC-0) | 4,100+ Scrapy spiders, weekly updates | No |
| MapQuest | Various | Limited | Search API v5: radius/rect/polygon/corridor | No |
| Nominatim | OSM geocoding | Free | Forward/reverse geocoding | No |
| Photon (Komoot) | OSM geocoding | Free | Typo-tolerant, multilingual | No |
OSM Reality Check (from Reddit): OpenStreetMap is poor for business/POI data. Business coverage is ~75% at best, biased toward bigger/popular locations.
Data Providers & Marketplaces
Section titled “Data Providers & Marketplaces”| Provider | Dataset | Pricing | Google Maps? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | 200.7M+ records | $0.0025/record | Yes |
| Datarade | 60M+ US (varies) | By provider | Yes |
| Veridion | 134M+ businesses | ~$99/user/mo | Partial |
| SafeGraph | 52M+ POIs | Commercial | Partial (foot traffic) |
| Dataplor | Various | Commercial | Partial (LatAm strong) |
| Xtract.io | 6M+ locations | Commercial | Partial |
| Coresignal | N/A | N/A | No (employee data only) |
| Data.world | N/A | N/A | No (data governance) |
Export & Data Liberation Tools
Section titled “Export & Data Liberation Tools”- Google Takeout: Export saved/starred places (CSV/JSON, no coordinates — needs geocoding)
- Takeout Tools: Adds coordinates, converts to GeoJSON/KML/GPX
- json2kml: Python converter for saved places to KML
- Export-Google-Maps-Saved-Places
- Firefox GPX Exporter: Export saved lists as GPX with lat/lon