0

I saw that one has not to obtain a Google Maps API key if you want to use their maps api in general, only if you want to use their web services and statistics etc.

Now I have two questions regarding this:

  1. If I have a public website which uses the Google Maps API to display a map with default options. How does Google count the API calls if I don't use an API key? (Maybe with the help of the domain which requests the map?)

  2. If they do so and my site exceeds the 25k calls/day, is there a possiblity that my users can login with their Google account on my site and some backend logic will get them an API key from Google that I store e.g. in a database. So I could use the API keys of my users to bypass the API usage limits only for my site.

Kara
  • 6,115
  • 16
  • 50
  • 57
eff8691
  • 67
  • 7

1 Answers1

1

Assuming you are using the Javascript API v3:

This SO question partially answers your queries.

Have a look at the usage limits, it looks like that you cannot use more than one API key:

Can I use more than one API key to increase my available usage over the documented limits? Google reserves the right to withhold access to the Maps API from any site that attempts to use more than the permitted number of map loads of the Maps API without permission, and fails to respond when contacted by Google.

Though this may be debatable, to me it seems a bad idea using your user's API key. For sure you need to ask the permission, then you have to monitor their quotas and so on, a minefield...

TL;DR if you exceed constantly the daily quota you should purchase a larger quota.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Toni Toni Chopper
  • 1,833
  • 2
  • 20
  • 29
  • 1
    Understood.As far as I've seen now, there is a difference between Map Loads and geocoding when using the map on a website. Imagine I have a site which displays the map and some search field which is used to enter a location which should be pinned on the map after the user hits a submit button. Google counts the map loads as requested by the server's IP address, right? In contrast the geocoding requests are always done by the client, because of the javascript and ajax functions in the code? That would mean 25k map loads/day on server side and max. 2500 geocode request/day on client side. – eff8691 Dec 10 '12 at 18:39
  • Yes I think you're right on that. Also, what they consider a map load is `a map is displayed using the Maps JavaScript API (V2 or V3) when loaded by a web page or application` so zooming in/out and moving around wouldn't count as a new map load. – Toni Toni Chopper Dec 13 '12 at 09:55