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Do Geocoding APIs usage limits (2,5000 per day) relate to standard Geocoder I may use in my app?

Nikita Barishok
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  • Does this answer your question? [Android Geocoder quota limits](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8218764/android-geocoder-quota-limits) – Toan Le Jul 14 '20 at 20:24

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No. There is no usage limit associated with calling the functions in android.location.Geocoder. However, there is also no SLA or performance guarantee associated with this API, so there's a price/quality tradeoff to be made.

AndrewR
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Actually, I just fell victim to the fact that there are limits to the number of calls you can make to the standard Geocoder API that comes as part of the Android framework.

Google does nothing to communicate that, though: you have to find out the hard way, which will happen as soon as you go over some nebulous limit that's never specified or when they feel like your app has 'abused' the calls to the back-end service you're allowed to make. Again, "abuse" is never defined.

As my app relies heavily on the Geocoder functionality, I was simply slammed in the face with null return values.

The block seems to be on a per-device basis, but again, nothing is concrete.

More info about this here, I wrote a Medium post about it last night (huge coincidence!) https://hackernoon.com/wtf-android-sdk-part-iii-geocoder-aphasia-3bb8b9b6016b

Antonis427
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  • Re: your article: I think what's happening is not a quota problem. You're assuming that returned addresses have 3 address lines (ie the city is in getAddressLine(2)). – AndrewR Aug 21 '17 at 01:04
  • @AndrewR Yes, but the thing is, it used to work just fine for quite some time (about a year) and then stopped working on frequent users' devices. I don't think that's the problem. – Antonis427 Aug 21 '17 at 06:58
  • The geocoding service that backs android.location.Geocoder has changed recently. It used to return multi-line addresses but now returns one-line addresses. – AndrewR Aug 21 '17 at 08:11
  • @AndrewR I didn't know that! I'll do some tests (request an address and iterate through it) and see what happens! If what you're saying is accurate I'll update my article and my answer. – Antonis427 Aug 21 '17 at 08:54
  • Services cost money. it's not a good idea to go live with a use of any 3rd party service without contacting them and making sure you understand their pricing model – Taldroid Aug 04 '19 at 20:23
  • https://stackoverflow.com/a/17782962/4207788 related older answer to this issue – Toan Le Jul 14 '20 at 18:14