CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-maps
Flukey
Flukey

Reputation: 6555

Google maps charging costs - how it works? What defines a 'click'?

If this is the wrong place to ask, please do move it and accept my sincere apologies.

So I've read Google Maps will start charging $4 for every 1000 clicks over a threshold of 25,000 in a 24 hour period.

I'm not sure too sure about how this will work. What defines a 'click'. A maps API call?

I have a website. A large website in terms of code and functionality but a small website in terms of use. It's a new website.

On a users profile, there is a map of their city.

If they go to a location to look for bars, clubs etc. There is a map with pins of all the venues in that city. In search results, next to the result, I also show a small map of where the venue is. If I show 25 results, then I'll have 25 smalls maps. If I go to a venue page, there'll be a map also.

As you can see, I use the maps quite extensively (I really love google maps!)

There are quite a lot of calls to the API, but I'm not a big company. Far from it. I'm just a developer trying to launch a site and hopefully it'll be successful. So if I start getting over 25,000 in a 24hour period, the cost of running the site will go up exponentially. This is easily achievable. I wouldn't need many users to achieve this threshold.

If I got a 35,000 'clicks' per day. That'll be $40 per day and about $1200 (30days) per month. I couldn't afford that.

I would only need 100 users loading search results 10 times to achieve the 25000 threshold.

So, can someone please clarify what counts as a click. If I reload a page which has a map on it three times, does this count as three 'clicks'?

And from a programming perspective, if indeed this is the case, is there anything I can do to reduce API calls? in terms of caching etc.

BTW, I'm not using any address looks up. I'm using latitude and longitude for everything.

Thank you in advance.

EDIT: I'm not against Google Maps charging. I know they've put in a lot of money into it. However, $4 per 1000 clicks would be effectively bankrupt me.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 539

Answers (1)

barryhunter
barryhunter

Reputation: 21091

The FAQ http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#tos_mapload has this information.

basically every time the browser calls the API loading tag

 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=set_to_true_or_false">

Trace how many times you load that. Google have Analytics that could be used :)

(You could perhaps convert all/some 'small maps' to Static maps. you get 25k of them as well as 25k dynamic maps)

Upvotes: 1

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