# Amazon Location Service vs Geocodio (slim)

> Amazon Location Service scores 76.5 (BB) to Geocodio's 72.2 (BB) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Amazon Location Service scores 76.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Geocodio's 72.2 (BB), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Geocodio leads on schema & documentation, payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do geocoding.

- Amazon Location Service: BB 76.5, rank #43 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-location.min.md
- Geocodio: BB 72.2, rank #138 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/geocodio.min.md
- Amazon Location Service, good for Operators already on AWS who want geocoding, places and routing inside IAM, CloudTrail and one bill, with HERE data and GrabMaps for Southeast Asia. Ahead on Reliability, 95 against 70; Agent ergonomics, 88 against 80; Security & auth, 76 against 58. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- Geocodio, good for Batch geocoding and district or census enrichment of addresses in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, where results must be stored. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 92 against 87; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Maintenance & community, 86 against 60; Transparency & trust, 87 against 77.

| Category | Amazon Location Service | Geocodio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 95 | 70 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 87 | 92 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 88 | 80 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 76 | 58 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 60 | 86 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 77 | 87 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Amazon Location Service | Geocodio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Dotsquare LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://places.geo.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | no (local only) |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for geocoding | $0.50 per 1,000 requests | $1600 per month (plan) |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement and AWS Service Terms. The AWS SDK clients and the agent context package on GitHub are Apache-2.0 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-08-17 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-01 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2018-05-25 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 427k npm/wk | 21k npm/wk, 921 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Geocodio +26: Amazon Location Service 60 (Read as a closed service, by the listing's own service models, as the S3 re-check of 1 November read models/s3. The newest API change is still the `geo-maps` model on 17 August 2026 (point-of-interest density and category filters on maps), 76 days before the check. The models repository had commits to 30 October, none touching the `geo-places`, `geo-routes`, `geo-maps` or `location` models (20 of 30). In the last 90 days we found that one model change plus two releases of the agent context package, v1.1.0 on 6 August and v1.2.0 on 11 September 2026, with no later tag. The two package releases are agent guidance for the service, not changes to it, so half, as manifold-mcp's skills releases were read (10 of 20). AWS What's New posts for the service run to 2 April 2026 (none in the feed's 100 items from 20 to 30 October), re:Post and paid support exist, and the agent context repository had no open issues on 8 October (10 of 15). Official SDKs are current, the aws-sdk-js-v3 release v3.1161.0 and boto3 1.43.123, both tagged 30 October 2026 (15). SDKs regenerate from the model on AWS's release train, CI not checked (5 of 10). 20 + 10 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 60.); Geocodio 86 (API v2.1 released 3 November 2026 (Australia and New Zealand), and PHP library 3.4.1 on 4 November (30). Dated changelog entries on 8 September, 1, 8, 9, 19, 22 and 31 October and 3 November 2026, plus library releases in October (20). Public changelog, support by email and a team-staffed help desk named on the pricing page. We didn't read GitHub issue reply times (12). Official Python 1.6.0 and Node 2.3.0 from 12 October and PHP 3.4.1 from 4 November are current (15). Each library and the CLI run CI on GitHub Actions; we didn't check whether the runs pass (9). 30+20+12+15+9 = 86.)
- Reliability, Amazon Location Service +25: Amazon Location Service 95 (Hosted reading. AWS Health Dashboard with a feed per service and region (20). The Amazon Location feeds for us-east-1 and eu-west-1 held no events on 1 November 2026 (last built 31 October), and the dashboard's event history, re-read on 1 November, names Amazon Location in no event. Its oldest event is the us-east-1 one of 28 October 2025, the open Middle East events of March 2026 don't list it, and the newest update is the API Gateway us-west-2 event of 30 October 2026. The public dashboard lists only broad events, so a clean feed says less than a small vendor's detailed page (30). Default rates published per operation, re-read on 1 November, 100 a second for each Places call, 20 for `CalculateRoutes`, isolines and `SnapToRoads`, 5 for `CalculateRouteMatrix` and `OptimizeWaypoints`, with a burst of 80 per cent (the burst rule per the 8 October check) (15). Throttling returns `ThrottlingException` with HTTP 429, marked retryable in the service model, and every v2 call is a read, but the guide gives no backoff or `Retry-After` guidance (10 of 15). Amazon Location SLA at 99.9 per cent monthly uptime per region (last updated 5 May 2022, re-read on 1 November) (10). GA (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 95.); Geocodio 70 (Hosted lines. incident.io status page at status.geocod.io with five components (Geocodio API, Dashboard, Enterprise API, Enterprise Dashboard, Website) and an incidents feed at /api/v2/incidents.json (20). In the 90 days to 6 November 2026 the feed lists one incident marked major, 'Spreadsheet geocoding jobs are failing' on 27 October from 12:35 to 15:15 UTC, and a PHP security patch on 21 October marked no impact, so one major outage of a core feature (10). 1,000 requests a minute on single geocoding for pay-as-you-go and Flex, 100 on Enterprise Flex (15). 429 carries X-RateLimit-Remaining, -Limit and -Period, and llms.txt and AGENTS.md give a retry rule per status code with capped backoff, plus client-side idempotency guidance for the non-idempotent list and batch writes (15). The pricing page lists custom SLAs as an add-on on Unlimited and Enterprise plans, with no published terms, so no SLA (0). GA (10). 20+10+15+15+0+10 = 70.)
- Security & auth, Amazon Location Service +18: Amazon Location Service 76 (Three credential routes, SigV4 with IAM, Amazon Cognito, and API keys limited to named actions and resources with optional expiry and referrer or app restrictions, which earns 30 (the API key page re-read on 1 November). Less 10 because the API key is sent in the `key` query parameter, the only documented way to present it (20). API keys reach only read calls on Maps, Places and Routes, and IAM policies scope each action and resource (18 of 20). Results carry place names and third-party map data, and no prompt-injection guidance was found in the reviewed documentation (5 of 15). CloudTrail records management events by default and data events on request, and CloudWatch reports usage by `ApiKeyName` (15). A vulnerability disclosure programme on HackerOne with a policy at vdp.aws.security, public security bulletins (none from 17 October to 1 November names Amazon Location), audit reports in AWS Artifact, Amazon Location Service in SOC 1, 2 and 3 scope on the list updated 11 August 2026 (per the 17 October check), and a FedRAMP High announcement of 28 October 2024. The aws.amazon.com security.txt, re-read on 1 November, expires on 16 October 2027. No paid bug bounty was found, so 2 points stay held back, as on the S3, SES, Polly and Secrets Manager re-checks of 17 October and the S3 re-check of 1 November (18 of 20). 20 + 18 + 5 + 15 + 18 = 76.); Geocodio 58 (Revocable keys, five on pay-as-you-go, each with permissions (Lists and Distance off by default), which earns 25. Less 10 because the docs say 'All requests require &api_key=YOUR_API_KEY' and the OpenAPI spec defines only the query scheme, though an Authorization header has worked since March 2025 (15). Per-key permissions limit what a key can reach. DELETE on lists and distance jobs needs no confirmation (13). Results are addresses and government district, census and legislator data rather than user-written text. No prompt-injection guidance found (9). Usage per API key in the dashboard, downloadable as CSV, and billable-lookup headers on every response (8). Valid security.txt to 30 January 2030 with a PGP key and a responsible disclosure policy. SOC 2 Type II and annual penetration tests apply to the Enterprise platform only. No bug bounty found (13). 15+13+9+8+13 = 58.)
- Payments & pricing, Geocodio +10: Amazon Location Service 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1,000 prices for every operation and bucket published without a login, in the price feed the pricing page loads (still the 11 September 2026 publication on 1 November) (20). The pricing page lists monthly allowances for the first three months (20,000 core Places calls, 10,000 routes, 500,000 tiles), and Free Tier FAQ Q4, re-read on 1 November, says a payment method isn't required to sign up for most new customers but may be requested to verify identity. Half the line, as amazon-s3, amazon-polly and aws-secrets-manager got for the same FAQ (10). A person signs up in a browser. `CreateKey` mints API keys by API only after an account exists (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.); Geocodio 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). $1 per 1,000 lookups after the free tier, and per-credit rates for every Flex tier, public without login (20). 2,500 lookups a day free with no card until usage passes the free tier (20). Signup and key creation are a browser flow at dash.geocod.io (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.)
- Transparency & trust, Geocodio +10: Amazon Location Service 77 (Closed service under the AWS Service Terms (last updated 30 October 2026, re-read on 1 November), whose section 82 sets out storage, caching and attribution rules in detail (15 of 30). The guide says device positions are kept 30 days, geofences until deleted, and that queries are stripped of customer metadata before they go to data providers (per the 8 October check). Section 82.1 agrees and adds that providers may process requests outside the chosen region. No retention period was found for Places and Routes requests (20 of 30). Section 82.3 still allows AWS to change or drop a provider or feature on notice "where practicable", and no dated deprecation notice or end date for the v1 APIs was found (5 of 20). AWS's sub-processor page, re-read on 1 November (last updated 30 October 2026), lists Esri for Amazon Location in Australia, Germany and the USA and Grabtaxi Holdings and HERE North America in Ireland, Japan, Singapore and the USA, says processing happens in the customer's selected Regions and the providers' locations, and promises 30 days' notice of a new sub-processor. The region is chosen per request (20 of 20, as for S3, SES and Secrets Manager). 15 + 20 + 5 + 20 = 60.); Geocodio 87 (Editorial half only. Closed service with clear, dated terms under Virginia law, and libraries and CLI under MIT (20). The privacy policy says API and spreadsheet input and results are deleted within 45 days, error logs kept 90 days, and customer data isn't used to train AI models. A separate data retention policy and llms.txt put Lists API data at 72 hours. Results may be stored permanently by the customer (27). Replaced API versions are guaranteed for at least 12 months, breaking changes come only with a new version, and the changelog marks each one 'Breaking' (18). The privacy policy names its processors, such as Sentry and Laravel Nightwatch, and the security page says self-serve is hosted in Europe (15). 20+27+18+15 = 80.)
- Agent ergonomics, Amazon Location Service +8: Amazon Location Service 88 (API reading of the checklist. Places responses stay at the core fields unless `AdditionalFeatures` asks for more, and `MaxResults` caps the count, but there is no field selection and route responses can reach the 6 MB limit (20 of 25). `MaxResults` on six of seven Places calls, `NextToken` on `SearchText` and `SearchNearby`, and filters by country, bounding box and place type (18 of 20). Four typed errors per API, with a reason and field list on `ValidationException` (17 of 20). Every v2 operation is marked read-only in the model, so retries are safe. No hints apply to a plain API (18 of 20). One required field or none on most calls, an API key that avoids SigV4 signing, and SDKs on npm and PyPI among others (15).); Geocodio 80 (API reading. `limit`, opt-in `fields` appends and `stable_address_key` re-lookups size responses and cost, and results are ordered best first (20). Batches of 10,000 lookups, Lists for 10 million, distance filters (max_distance, max_results, order_by) and paginated list listings (17). Codes 403, 422, 429 and 500 each carry a documented meaning and retry rule, error bodies link a help page, and `_warnings` reports ignored parameters (18). Geocoding reads are safe to retry, but there's no idempotency key on batch or list creation and AGENTS.md says a retried request is billed again (10). One required parameter on a single geocode, and official libraries for Python, Node, PHP and Ruby plus a CLI with `--agent` output (15). 20+17+18+10+15 = 80.)