Ask HN: What is the best API for points of interest?

2 points by barnabees 5 years ago | 2 comments

I've looked at Google Places, Mapbox, Foursquare, and HERE, and I can't figure out which one to use.

People who have used these services, what are your thoughts on them, good or bad? I initially considered Google Places but the price is way too steep ($17 per 1000 searches!!). Currently leaning toward HERE but I haven't heard much about them and don't know if it's a good idea to rely on a relatively under the radar company.

amacalac 5 years ago |

HERE are/were owned by Nokia (the cellphone company).

Their mapping solution is often still found in in-car navigation systems (not CarPlay or Android Auto).

Don't get too attached to one solution or the other. If you build a class or module to contain the logic to communicate with the location provider, you should be able to refactor it later to talk to another location provider should you need to.

Getting started with one will give you a good idea of what works, and what is broken

barnabees 5 years ago | |

The thing is, I want to map my own information to points of interest. If I use Google for example, I can store my information and map that to their places id. But if/when I want to move to another service, I'm not sure how I'd do that. I could map information to the coordinates instead, but different services have different coordinates for POIs so it probably wouldn't work too well.