16 March 2022

Algolia Places Sunset

At the end of 2020, Algolia announced that they will be discontinuing their Algolia Places service in May 2022.

Our autocomplete service is a great alternative for Algolia Places which can be set up in just a couple of minutes.

Since Algolia was nice enough to highlight Geocode Earth as a replacement in their sunset post, we thought we’d help make the transition as easy as possible by summarizing the similarities (and differences!) relevant to anyone looking for a new address autocomplete solution.

Functionality

Core geocoding features.

	Algolia Places	Geocode Earth
Address Autocomplete
Places Autocomplete
Reverse Geocoding
Structured Geocoding
Batch Geocoding
Address Interpolation
Street Intersections

Data Sources

Data sets imported & available for search.

	Algolia Places	Geocode Earth
OpenStreetMap
Geonames
OpenAddresses
Who's on First
US Census

Data Coverage

Global data coverage per-layer (in millions).

	Algolia Places *	Geocode Earth
Administrative Regions	~4 MM	~10 MM
Addresses	~50 MM **	~630 MM
Streets	~20 MM	~30 MM
Venues / POIs	<1 MM	~40 MM
Intersections	0	~12.5 MM
Total	~75 MM	~720 MM

* Counts for Algolia Places come from their blog posts, or best estimates based on our in-depth knowledge of their data sources.

** Addresses in Algolia Places have street-level accuracy (all addresses on the same street have the same lat/lon coordinates).
Geocode Earth addresses have rooftop-level accuracy.

Software Tools

Libraries you can use to simplify integration.

	Algolia Places	Geocode Earth
Browser Library
NPM Module (React)
LeafletJS Integration
Command-line batch tools

Company

General policy & pricing information.

	Algolia Places	Geocode Earth
Company Focus	General Search	Autocomplete Geocoding
Retention Policy	Permissive / Permanent	Permissive / Permanent
Data Update Frequency	Last updated 2019	Minimum once per month
Cost per request	$0.40 per 1000	As low as $0.25 per 1000

Making the Switch

You can use Geocode Earth autocomplete with your existing Autocomplete.js code, or with our React-based Autocomplete element.

👋 Reach out if you need any help evaluating Geocode Earth as a replacement for your existing Algolia Places integration.