# Amazon Location Service vs Stadia Maps

> Amazon Location Service scores 74.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Stadia Maps's 65.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Stadia Maps leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do geo geocode. Stadia Maps is cheaper for geo…

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- Updated: 2026-10-08

Amazon Location Service scores 74.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Stadia Maps's 65.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Stadia Maps leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do geo geocode. Stadia Maps is cheaper for geo geocode, $0.40 against $0.50 per 1,000 requests.

- Amazon Location Service: grade BB, 74.1/100, rank #68 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-location.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-location.json
- Stadia Maps: grade B, 65.2/100, rank #261 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/stadia-maps.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/stadia-maps.json

## Which one, for what

### Amazon Location Service (BB)

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 63
- Agent ergonomics, 88 against 80
- Security & auth, 73 against 40

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: The API key is sent as the `key` query parameter, the only documented way to present it

### Stadia Maps (B)

Good for: Cost-sensitive geocoding, routing and tiles on OpenStreetMap data, with traffic-influenced routing since April 2026.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 70

Also in its favour:
- Cheaper for geo geocode, $0.40 against $0.50 per 1,000 requests
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Free plan is for development, testing and demos only


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Location Service | Stadia Maps | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 63 | Amazon Location Service +32 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 86 | Amazon Location Service +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 80 | Amazon Location Service +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 73 | 40 | Amazon Location Service +33 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Stadia Maps +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 80 | Stadia Maps +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 76 | Stadia Maps +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **74.1 · BB** | **65.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Location Service | Stadia Maps |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Stadia Maps |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://places.geo.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://api.stadiamaps.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for geo geocode | $0.50 per 1,000 requests | $0.40 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | no |
| 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 | BSD-3-Clause (MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-08-17 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-03-18 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 427k npm/wk | 23 stars, 6.1k npm/wk, 192 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Stadia Maps.** Public OpenAPI spec (11.1.0) with generated TypeScript and Python SDKs. Free plan is for development, testing and demos only.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Stadia Maps

1. Send the key as `Authorization: Stadia-Auth <key>` rather than in the URL
2. Try Autocomplete v2 (1 credit) before a full geocode (20 credits) when a name is enough
3. Check the dashboard's credit balance before retrying a 429, since it may mean the month is spent
4. Don't write geocodes to a database on Free or Starter
5. Use bulk-geocode for addresses only, not POI names

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Location Service or Stadia Maps?

Amazon Location Service scores 74.1 (BB) on agent readiness against Stadia Maps's 65.2 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Stadia Maps leads on payments & pricing, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Which is cheaper for geo geocode, Amazon Location Service or Stadia Maps?

Stadia Maps, at $0.40 per 1,000 requests against $0.50 per 1,000 requests for Amazon Location Service. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do Amazon Location Service and Stadia Maps need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call Amazon Location Service and Stadia Maps without installing anything?

Yes. Amazon Location Service has a hosted endpoint at https://places.geo.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and Stadia Maps at https://api.stadiamaps.com.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-location-vs-stadia-maps.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-location-vs-stadia-maps.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "amazon-location", "b": "stadia-maps"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare amazon-location stadia-maps`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-location.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/stadia-maps.json

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