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Head to head · Geocoding · October 2026 research run

Azure Maps vs HERE Location Services

Azure Maps scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do geocoding.

Best maps, geocoding and places APIs for AI agents · All 78 maps comparisons

Azure MapsMicrosoft Azure · HTTP API B67.9/100#236 of 950 HERE Location ServicesHERE Technologies · HTTP API C58/100#591 of 950

Which one, for what

Azure Maps B

Good for Teams already on Azure that want geocoding and routing under Entra ID roles and one flat price.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 81 against 57
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 67 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 74 against 63

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where HERE Location Services loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Place and category search exist only in Search 1.0. Search 2026-01-01, which supersedes it, has geocoding, autocomplete, reverse geocoding and polygons

HERE Location Services C

Good for Fleet and logistics work that needs truck routing, large matrices, isolines, traffic and transit from one vendor with an SLA.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Platform Terms section f forbids using HERE Materials in connection with a machine learning or AI system, generative AI included. This matters before any probe is run

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAzure MapsHERE Location ServicesEdge
Reliability16%208157Azure Maps +24
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28387HERE Location Services +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.27374HERE Location Services +1
Security & auth14%17.56665Azure Maps +1
Payments & pricing10%12.52010Azure Maps +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86760Azure Maps +7
Transparency & trust7%8.87463Azure Maps +11
Negative events≤150-3
Total67.9 · B58 · C

Facts side by side

FactAzure MapsHERE Location Services
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorMicrosoft AzureHERE Technologies
Hosted endpointhttps://atlas.microsoft.comhttps://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for geocoding$4.50 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Microsoft's Product Terms. The Azure SDK client libraries are MITProprietary service under the HERE Platform Terms
Tools exposednone13
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-302026-09-09
Terms last updatedno date given2023-09-18
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-012024-08-29
Customer content may train modelsyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity9.1k npm/wk, 25k PyPI/wknone

Verdicts

Azure Maps

Azure Maps publishes OpenAPI documents for every service, per-service rate limits, a 99.9 per cent SLA and written rules on storing results, and Entra ID roles can limit a caller to one service. Place search exists only in Search 1.0, which the newer version has superseded, and the REST client libraries are all beta.

HERE Location Services

Each endpoint page carries an OpenAPI 3.0 definition as Markdown, and HERE publishes 99.9 per cent monthly availability targets and a six-month deprecation policy. The Platform Terms of September 2023 forbid using HERE Materials in connection with a machine learning or AI system, and the price table could not be read.

Before you call either

Azure Maps

  1. Send the key in the subscription-key header, or use Authorization: Bearer with x-ms-client-id. The key also works as a URL parameter, which leaks into logs.
  2. Call GET /geocode?api-version=2026-01-01 for addresses. It can return 200 with no results, so check confidence, matchCodes and the entity type before use.
  3. Use Search 1.0 (/search/poi/json, /search/nearby/json, /search/fuzzy/json) for places. The 2026-01-01 version has no place search.
  4. Use eu.atlas.microsoft.com or us.atlas.microsoft.com to keep request data in that geography.
  5. Don't store route or tile results beyond six months, and never for serving several users. The product terms allow keeping geocodes while the account is active.

HERE Location Services

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer with an OAuth token where logs are kept. The apiKey query parameter puts the secret in every URL
  2. Do not store results for more than 30 days, and follow the HTTP caching headers on each response
  3. Treat 429 and 503 as throttling. HERE says a traffic surge can be throttled for about 10 minutes below the account's quota
  4. Read code, cause and action in the error body, and quote correlationId to support
  5. For Location Reasoning, send initialize, keep the Mcp-Session-Id header on later calls, and send a bearer token on tools/call

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Azure Maps or HERE Location Services?

Azure Maps scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do Azure Maps and HERE Location Services need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Azure Maps and HERE Location Services without installing anything?

Yes. Azure Maps has a hosted endpoint at https://atlas.microsoft.com and HERE Location Services at https://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1.

Other comparisons with Azure Maps or HERE Location Services

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