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According to the recent GMP updates, you are asked to create a billing account and is given credit of 200 USD per month. That's cool.

However, it's also stated that Google Maps is free for static map loads on mobiles (iOS/Android) SDKs. See references

  1. https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/ "all users get: Free Maps usage for iOS, Android, and Embed (for displaying maps only)"

  2. https://mapsplatformtransition.withgoogle.com/calculator

Q) Do I still need to create a billing account given that I'm only going to use the free mobile maps API?

Thank you.

Ruchira Randana
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it’s about Google’s billing and not programming so it should be asked from Google – Sami Kuhmonen Jul 16 '18 at 05:51
  • I asked from Google and they sent me here to ask the question with the tag which I have put. – Ruchira Randana Jul 16 '18 at 06:50
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    Then they were wrong and please reply to them and ask them to stop doing that. Stack Overflow isn't for their billing support at all and it's very bad for them to direct you here. – Sami Kuhmonen Jul 16 '18 at 06:52
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    Since the date of the switch is today, we'll find out the answer soon enough. – Tom Jul 16 '18 at 08:25
  • Thanks a lot Tom! Appreciate your help on this. – Ruchira Randana Jul 16 '18 at 08:37
  • If you didn't enable billing, Google created a special billing account for you: https://stackoverflow.com/a/50568604/5140781. But this account will work until you exceeded free $200 limit. – xomena Jul 18 '18 at 14:42

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Billing must be activated to use maps for free on mobile, as stated here:

Reminder: To use our Maps, Routes, and Places APIs:

  • You’ll need to enable billing on each of your projects. ...

Maps are available for free if one of the following components is used:

  • One of MapFragment, SupportMapFragment, or MapView classes on Android (for each onCreate() method call)
  • A GMSMapView object on iOS
flerro
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