Accessing Map Tiles of MKMapView

Question

I'm currently developing an app that needs to display a map of where the user is currently located in the world. For technical reasons, I need to access every map tiles as an image (png/jpg) before going in the rendering pipeline.

I have tried 3rd party services like MapBox, MapQuest as they have a REST api that enables me to receive a png/jpg of a tile according to the requested location. The issue here is that MapBox isn't free, so I was wondering if there was a way to access the tiles that Apple provides in it's maps app. What service are they using under the hood? Would I be violating some terms of use by going with this approach.

Please note that using some integrated "do-it-all" UIMapView is not an option for me, I need the image directly.

Thanks

Answer 1

Google has a REST API. You can see the details here https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/staticmaps/?csw=1. It does cost money if you go over the usage limits.

I manually download Map Tiles for my app, but I don't use MKMapKit. I have my own MapView and I am using a combination of MapBox, Thunderforest, CalTopo, OSM, and map tiles that I generated and host on AWS. All of them have a pretty easy map tile URL scheme, but you do have to pay for most of them.