Amazon Location Service vs LocationIQ

Amazon Location Service

Places, Routes and Maps calls work over plain HTTPS with an API key limited to named actions, and every one of the 17 operations is read-only with typed inputs. Access starts with an AWS account a person opens, the key travels in the URL query string, and stored results cost eight times the single-use rate.

LocationIQ

5,000 free requests a day with no card, commercial use allowed with a link back. No changelog, release notes or blog.

Amazon Location Service

1. Call the v2 endpoints (places.geo.<region>.amazonaws.com/v2/geocode, routes.geo, maps.geo). They need no resource creation, unlike the v1 place index and route calculator calls
2. Set IntendedUse to Storage before saving or caching any Places result. The default SingleUse results may not be stored under section 82.4 of the AWS Service Terms
3. Read PricingBucket in each response. Requesting Contact, Access, TimeZone or Phonemes in AdditionalFeatures moves a Places call from $0.50 to $1.50 per 1,000
4. Keep the API key out of logs and shared URLs, since it travels as ?key=. Use SigV4 with an IAM role for server-side work, and for the Jobs API, which refuses API keys
5. Back off on HTTP 429 ThrottlingException. The burst allowance is 80 per cent of the per-second rate within any part of a second

LocationIQ

1. Use eu1.locationiq.com for European users or data
2. Add format=json and limit=1 to keep responses small
3. On 429 Rate Limited Second wait a second, on Rate Limited Day stop until the next day
4. Call /balance before a large batch to see what's left of the day's quota
5. Redact the key parameter before logging request URLs