# Azure Maps vs HERE Location Services

> Azure Maps scores 67.9 (B) to HERE Location Services's 58 (C) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-here-location-services
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-here-location-services.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-here-location-services.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-here-location-services.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.

- Azure Maps: grade B, 67.9/100, rank #236 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/azure-maps.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/azure-maps.json
- HERE Location Services: grade C, 58/100, rank #591 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/here-location-services.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/here-location-services.json
- Best maps, geocoding and places APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/maps/index.md
- All 78 maps comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/maps/index.md

## 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.

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

| Category | Weight | Azure Maps | HERE Location Services | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 81 | 57 | Azure Maps +24 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 87 | HERE Location Services +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 74 | HERE Location Services +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 65 | Azure Maps +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 10 | Azure Maps +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 60 | Azure Maps +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 63 | Azure Maps +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **67.9 · B** | **58 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Azure Maps | HERE Location Services |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft Azure | HERE Technologies |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://atlas.microsoft.com` | `https://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for geocoding | $4.50 per 1,000 requests | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Microsoft's Product Terms. The Azure SDK client libraries are MIT | Proprietary service under the HERE Platform Terms |
| Tools exposed | none | 13 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-09 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2023-09-18 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-01 | 2024-08-29 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 9.1k npm/wk, 25k PyPI/wk | none |

## 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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Azure Maps or HERE Location Services

- [Amazon Location Service vs Azure Maps](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-location-vs-azure-maps.md)
- [Amazon Location Service vs HERE Location Services](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-location-vs-here-location-services.md)
- [ArcGIS Location Platform vs Azure Maps](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arcgis-vs-azure-maps.md)
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- [Azure Maps vs Geoapify Location Platform + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-geoapify.md)
- [Azure Maps vs Google Maps Platform + Grounding Lite MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-google-maps-platform.md)
- [Azure Maps vs LocationIQ](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-locationiq.md)
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- [Azure Maps vs MapQuest](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-mapquest.md)
- [Azure Maps vs OpenCage Geocoding API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-opencage.md)
- [Azure Maps vs Radar](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-radar.md)
- [Azure Maps vs Stadia Maps](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-stadia-maps.md)
- [Azure Maps vs TomTom Maps APIs + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-maps-vs-tomtom.md)
- [Geoapify Location Platform + MCP vs HERE Location Services](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geoapify-vs-here-location-services.md)
- [Google Maps Platform + Grounding Lite MCP vs HERE Location Services](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-maps-platform-vs-here-location-services.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs LocationIQ](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-locationiq.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs Mapbox APIs + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-mapbox.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs MapQuest](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-mapquest.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs OpenCage Geocoding API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-opencage.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs Radar](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-radar.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs Stadia Maps](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-stadia-maps.md)
- [HERE Location Services vs TomTom Maps APIs + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-tomtom.md)