Pricing & free-tier strategy (USA)¶

All numbers below are accurate as of April 2026; always confirm on the vendor’s pricing page before building a production collector. The strategies assume a USA-based account billed in USD.

Google Maps Platform¶

Product: Directions API.
Pricing page: https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/
SKU: Directions Advanced (with traffic) or Directions Basic.
Free tier: $200 of monthly credits across the platform. Basic Directions is priced per request (~$5 / 1k), so the $200 ceiling covers ~40k requests/month on Basic.
Staying free: poll at most every ~60 seconds across all routes (40k / (30 days × 24 h × 60 min) ≈ 0.92 req/min). Use traffic_model=best_guess only when you actually need live traffic, since it’s a more expensive SKU.

Bing Maps¶

Product: Routes API.
Pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/bing-maps/pricing
SKU: Basic Key / Non-billable Transactions (legacy) or Azure Maps (Microsoft is migrating Bing Maps features to Azure). A Basic key allows 125k non-billable transactions per calendar year.
Staying free: budget 125k / 365 ≈ 342 req/day. One trip every ~4 minutes fits easily.

TomTom¶

Product: Routing API.
Pricing: https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api
Free tier: 2,500 requests/day (Developer plan).
Staying free: one trip every 35 seconds sustained, more than enough.

HERE¶

Product: Routing v8.
Pricing: https://www.here.com/get-started/pricing
Free tier: 30k transactions/month on the Freemium plan.
Staying free: 30k / 30 days = 1,000/day, ≈ one every 90 seconds.

MapQuest¶

Product: Directions API (open & licensed).
Pricing: https://developer.mapquest.com/plans
Free tier: 15,000 transactions/month on the Community plan.
Staying free: 500/day; every ~3 minutes.

Mapbox¶

Product: Directions API (driving-traffic).
Pricing: https://www.mapbox.com/pricing
Free tier: First 100,000 Directions requests/month free.
Staying free: practically unlimited for a personal collector.

Azure Maps¶

Product: Route service.
Pricing: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-maps/
Free tier (Gen2 S0 SKU): 250,000 transactions/month.
Staying free: effectively unlimited for a single collector.

Multi-provider budget sheet¶

If you want to hit every provider once per poll, the binding constraint is MapQuest (500/day). At one poll every ~3 minutes across weekday work hours, you stay within every free tier listed above.