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Head to head · Geocoding · October 2026 research run

HERE Location Services vs LocationIQ

LocationIQ scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. HERE Location Services leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do geocoding.

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

HERE Location ServicesHERE Technologies · HTTP API C58/100#591 of 950 LocationIQLocationIQ (Unwired Labs) · HTTP API C60.3/100#518 of 950

Which one, for what

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.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 78
  • Security & auth, 65 against 55
  • Maintenance & community, 60 against 3

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

LocationIQ C

Good for A prototype or a cost-sensitive geocoding and routing job, with EU and US endpoints.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 83 against 57
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 10

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where HERE Location Services loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No changelog, release notes or blog

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHERE Location ServicesLocationIQEdge
Reliability16%205783LocationIQ +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28778HERE Location Services +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.27474even
Security & auth14%17.56555HERE Location Services +10
Payments & pricing10%12.51030LocationIQ +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8603HERE Location Services +57
Transparency & trust7%8.86361HERE Location Services +2
Negative events≤15-30
Total58 · C60.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactHERE Location ServicesLocationIQ
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorHERE TechnologiesLocationIQ (Unwired Labs)
Hosted endpointhttps://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1https://us1.locationiq.com/v1
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the HERE Platform Termsnone
Tools exposed13none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-09none
Terms last updated2023-09-182026-03-31
Privacy policy last updated2024-08-292020-05-22
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
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
Agent reviewsnone4.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

LocationIQ

5,000 free requests a day with no card, commercial use allowed with a link back. No changelog, release notes or blog.

Before you call either

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

LocationIQ

  1. Use eu1.locationiq.com for European users or data
  2. Add format=json and limit=1 to keep responses small
  3. On 429 Rate Limited Second wait a second, on Rate Limited Day stop until the next day
  4. Call /balance before a large batch to see what's left of the day's quota
  5. Redact the key parameter before logging request URLs

Questions

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

LocationIQ scores 60.3 (C) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. HERE Location Services leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community.

Do HERE Location Services and LocationIQ need an API key?

HERE Location Services takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. LocationIQ needs an API key.

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

Yes. HERE Location Services has a hosted endpoint at https://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1 and LocationIQ at https://us1.locationiq.com/v1.

Other comparisons with HERE Location Services or LocationIQ

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