Head to head · Geocoding · October 2026 research run

Geocodio vs Radar

Geocodio scores 72.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Radar's 53.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do geocoding.

Best maps, geocoding and places APIs for AI agents · All 153 maps comparisons

Which one, for what

Geocodio BB

Best 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 50
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 65
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 77
  • Transparency & trust, 87 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Covers only the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and UK needs a Flex or Unlimited plan

Radar D

Best for A company that already has a Radar contract, or wants geofencing and trip tracking with geocoding and routing on one key.

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

The pricing page says Radar has no free tier and every plan is an annual commitment set by quote

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Schema & documentation Geocodio +42

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.

Radar 50

No OpenAPI description or other machine-readable contract was found in the docs index (0). docs.radar.com publishes llms.txt and a Markdown twin of each page, with the whole API reference in one Markdown file of about 154 KB (10). Descriptions say what an operation is for and sometimes when to use another, for example forward geocoding for complete addresses and autocomplete for partial ones (14). Parameters are listed with type, required or optional, ranges and allowed values, though coordinate lists travel as pipe-delimited strings and there is no schema to validate against (11). Every operation has a sample request and response, and there is one list of 12 response codes with one sample error (11). Paths carry /v1, and no API changelog was found (4). 0 + 10 + 14 + 11 + 11 + 4 = 50.

Transparency & trust Geocodio +32

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.

Radar 55

Closed service with public Terms of Use, and an Apache-2.0 web SDK. The terms date from 24 May 2023, describe a free version the pricing page says does not exist, and paid plans run on a quoted agreement that is not published (12). The privacy notice of 13 May 2025, a public DPA and the FAQ agree on a default retention of 1 year, with 90 days for trips and 7 days for location updates in the FAQ. The privacy notice itself gives no period (22). No deprecation policy was found, and the terms let Radar change or stop the services without notice. One parameter (userId on geofences) is marked deprecated with no date (2). The DPA names AWS and MongoDB as sub-processors, and the privacy notice says hosting is in the United States (15). 12 + 22 + 2 + 15 = 51. The privacy notice and DPA weren't re-read on 4 November, so their readings are per the 9 October check.

Payments & pricing Geocodio +30

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.

Radar 10

No x402, MPP or L402 (0). The pricing page publishes starting prices without a login, $0.50 per 1,000 calls for Core Maps and $2.00 for Premium Maps, but every plan is an annual commitment at a rate set by quote (10). The pricing page says "Radar does not currently offer a free tier", and the technical validation period goes through sales (0). Keys come from a dashboard account, and the sign-up page was closed to us by robots.txt on 9 October, so no programmatic route was found (0). 0 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 10.

Agent ergonomics Geocodio +15

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.

Radar 65

Read as an API. limit on search operations (1 to 100), layers and country filters on geocoding, and optional geometry on route optimisation size a response, with no field selection (14). List operations page with limit up to 1,000 and date cursors such as updatedBefore (16). Errors are JSON with code, param and message, and every response carries X-Radar-Request-ID (15). The maps operations only read. Geofence and beacon writes are PUT upserts by external ID, and no idempotency key was found for trip or user creation (10). Most maps calls need one parameter. Official SDKs cover web, iOS, Android and five cross-platform frameworks, all client-side, with no server library found (10). 14 + 16 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 65.

Maintenance & community Geocodio +9

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.

Radar 77

No API changelog was found, so recency rests on Radar's own SDKs. radar-sdk-android 4.2.0 on 29 October and radar-sdk-ios 3.45.0 on 27 October 2026, and in the listed web SDK, maps-v1.2.0 on 13 October (a MapLibre upgrade with changes to RadarMap.ts and RadarMarker.ts), all within 30 days (30). Stable tags in the 90 days from 6 August include web v5.1.2 (25 August), v5.1.3 (31 August), v5.2.0 (1 September), autocomplete-v1.1.1 (14 September) and maps-v1.2.0, iOS 3.40.0 to 3.45.0 and Android 3.37.0 to 4.2.0; betas aren't counted (20). No public changelog for the API, support through a customer success manager and a feedback form, and GitHub issue replies were not read (5). Official SDKs for eight platforms are current (15). The web SDK repository carries Jest tests and CodeQL and npm publish workflows, whose results were not read (7). 30 + 20 + 5 + 15 + 7 = 77.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGeocodioRadarEdge
Reliability16%207070even
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29250Geocodio +42
Agent ergonomics13%16.28065Geocodio +15
Security & auth14%17.55856Geocodio +2
Payments & pricing10%12.54010Geocodio +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88677Geocodio +9
Transparency & trust7%8.88755Geocodio +32
Negative events≤150-2
TotalBB 72.2/100D 53.3/100

Facts side by side

FactGeocodioRadar
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorDotsquare LLCRadar Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.radar.io/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
Price for geocoding$1600 per month (plan)not published
x402nono
LicencenoneProprietary service under Radar's Terms of Use. The web SDK in radarlabs/radar-sdk-js is Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-11-032026-10-13
Terms last updatedno date given2023-05-24
Privacy policy last updated2018-05-252025-05-13
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity21k npm/wk, 921 PyPI/wknone

Verdicts

Geocodio

Geocodio publishes llms.txt, an AGENTS.md on cost and retries, an OpenAPI spec and a dated changelog, and its results may be stored permanently. Coverage stops at six countries, there's no MCP server or published SLA for self-serve plans, and the docs still put the key in the query string by default.

Radar

Radar documents 38 REST operations in Markdown with a rate limit on each, and its status feed shows two API incidents of elevated errors or latency in 90 days. Access is sales-led. The pricing page says there is no free tier, every plan is an annual commitment, and no OpenAPI description or API changelog was found.

Before you call either

Geocodio

  1. Always set country, because an address with none falls back to the US and is billed even when it's wrong
  2. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer, not in the query string, so it stays out of logs
  3. Use batch POST /geocode (up to 10,000 lookups) or the Lists API rather than looping single requests
  4. Treat accuracy_type place, county or state as not found, and check _warnings for appends that were billed but skipped
  5. Don't retry 403 or 422. On 429 read X-RateLimit headers and back off, and never re-upload a list sitting in ENQUEUED

Radar

  1. Send the key in the Authorization header with no Bearer prefix, and call https://api.radar.io/v1, not radar.com
  2. Use a publishable key for geocoding, search and routing. Keep the secret key for users, trips, geofences and beacons
  3. Call /v1/search/autocomplete for partial addresses and place names. /v1/geocode/forward is documented as best for complete addresses
  4. Set units=metric on routing calls. The default is imperial, with distances in feet
  5. Treat 429 as one of three things (rate limit, no state change or selective throttling) and 402 as usage exceeded. No Retry-After header is documented
  6. Do not keep geocoding, autocomplete or place results for more than 30 days

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Geocodio or Radar?

Geocodio scores 72.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Radar's 53.3 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do Geocodio and Radar need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Geocodio and Radar without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Geocodio. Radar has a hosted endpoint at https://api.radar.io/v1.

Other comparisons with Geocodio or Radar

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.