# Geocodio vs LocationIQ (slim)

> Geocodio scores 72.2 (BB) to LocationIQ's 60.3 (C) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geocodio-vs-locationiq.md (~4,500 tokens) · this version ~2,580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geocodio-vs-locationiq.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geocodio-vs-locationiq
- 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
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Geocodio scores 72.2 (BB) on agent readiness against LocationIQ's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. LocationIQ leads on reliability. Both do geocoding.

- Geocodio: BB 72.2, rank #138 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/geocodio.min.md
- LocationIQ: C 60.3, rank #658 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/locationiq.min.md
- 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 78; Agent ergonomics, 80 against 74; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Maintenance & community, 86 against 3; Transparency & trust, 87 against 61. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.
- LocationIQ, good for A prototype or a cost-sensitive geocoding and routing job, with EU and US endpoints. Ahead on Reliability, 83 against 70. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.

| Category | Geocodio | LocationIQ |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 70 | 83 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 92 | 78 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 80 | 74 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 55 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 86 | 3 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 87 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Geocodio | LocationIQ |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Dotsquare LLC | LocationIQ (Unwired Labs) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://us1.locationiq.com/v1` |
| Price for geocoding | $1600 per month (plan) | not published |
| Last release | 2026-11-03 | none |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-03-31 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2018-05-25 | 2020-05-22 |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 21k npm/wk, 921 PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 4.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Geocodio +83: 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.); LocationIQ 3 (We found no changelog, release notes or blog on 4 November (docs.locationiq.com/changelog, locationiq.com/changelog and locationiq.com/blog all return 404, and llms.txt lists none), so there's no dated API change to count. The terms were updated 31 March 2026, which isn't an API change (0). No dated entries in the last 90 days (0). No public changelog. Support is by email, which we didn't test (3). The official Python client hasn't changed since 30 March 2020 (0). Nothing current to judge package health by (0). The status page shows the service is run and watched, which this checklist doesn't capture. 0+0+3+0+0 = 3.)
- Transparency & trust, Geocodio +26: 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.); LocationIQ 61 (Closed service with readable terms, updated 31 March 2026, under the laws of Telangana, India (15). The terms are specific on storage, 48 hours on Free and for as long as you're a customer on paid plans, with no server-side tile caching. The privacy policy at locationiq.com/privacy was last updated 22 May 2020, says IP addresses are stored to check for abuse with no retention period, and links a DPA (15). No deprecation policy or notices found (0). Stripe, Zoho and Google Analytics named without locations. Data centre regions are visible on the status page, not in the policy (10).)
- Schema & documentation, Geocodio +14: Geocodio 92 (OpenAPI 3.0.1 spec, version 2.1.0, with 11 paths (25). llms.txt and an AGENTS.md written for agents (10). llms.txt and AGENTS.md say when to use each endpoint and when not to, such as the Lists API over looping single calls, the upload tool for a one-off spreadsheet and straightline over driving distance unless road distance is needed (19). Typed parameters with country values, component fields and documented limits, though `fields` is a comma-separated string (12). Error table with retry guidance, examples throughout, but the spec documents 200, 400, 403, 404, 422 and 424 and not 429 or 500 (11). Versioned paths from v1 to v2.1 and a dated public changelog with entries back to 2024 (15). 25+10+19+12+11+15 = 92.); LocationIQ 78 (OpenAPI 3.0.0 spec, version 1.5.1 on 4 November, at docs.locationiq.com/openapi.yaml, covering search, reverse, autocomplete, nearby, directions, matrix, `/optimize` and the rest, with 429 responses defined (25). docs.locationiq.com/llms.txt indexes about 50 pages, mostly as .md (10). The reference describes each endpoint and parameter (12). Typed parameters in the spec (12). An errors page with the exact message string for each code (14). v1 in the path and a versioned spec, but no changelog (5).)
- Reliability, LocationIQ +13: 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.); LocationIQ 83 (status.locationiq.com lists 15 components by data centre (geocoding, autocomplete, maps and routing in Europe, US East, US West and Asia Pacific) with RSS and Atom history back to March 2018, 74 incidents in all, per the 1 October check (20). The newest incident then was 'Network Issues' on 2 April 2026, so 6 August to 1 October was clean. On 4 November the status host answered robots.txt with its app page, so nothing more was requested there, 2 October to 4 November is unread, and the line is held at what the read part supports (30). Per-second and daily limits for every plan, and per-token and per-IP limits on top, with soft daily limits of up to 100% more on paid plans (15). Three distinct 429 messages, Rate Limited Second, Minute and Day, and a 500 that says to retry after a short wait, but no Retry-After or backoff guidance (8). No SLA. The pricing page lists custom SLAs only on its top plan and points to public uptime instead (0). GA (10). 20+30+15+8+0+10 = 83.)
- Payments & pricing, Geocodio +10: 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.); LocationIQ 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Public plan prices with daily or monthly quotas, but no per-request price or overage rate, since requests over quota are refused (10). Free plan of 5,000 requests a day with no card, and commercial use allowed with a prominent link back (20). Signup is a browser flow (0).)
- Agent ergonomics, Geocodio +6: 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.); LocationIQ 74 (No MCP server. Responses can be sized with limit, format, addressdetails and dedupe, and a /balance endpoint reports what's left (20). countrycodes, viewbox and bounded on search, and tag filters on nearby (17). Error messages tell a burst (Rate Limited Second) from a spent day (Rate Limited Day) and a missing scope from a bad key (18). Every call reads and is safe to retry, but there are no tool annotations to give (12). Few required parameters, but the official Python client's last commit is 30 March 2020 and the Leaflet plugin's 15 June 2020 (7).)