# HERE Location Services vs Stadia Maps

> Stadia Maps scores 65.2 (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/here-location-services-vs-stadia-maps
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-stadia-maps.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-stadia-maps.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/here-location-services-vs-stadia-maps.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

Stadia Maps scores 65.2 (B) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. HERE Location Services leads on security & auth. Both do geocoding.

- 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
- Stadia Maps: grade B, 65.2/100, rank #325 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/stadia-maps.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/stadia-maps.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

### 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:
- Security & auth, 65 against 40

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

### Stadia Maps (B)

Good for: Cost-sensitive geocoding, routing and tiles on OpenStreetMap data, with traffic-influenced routing since April 2026.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 63 against 57
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 74
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 63

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
- No incidents deducted, where HERE Location Services loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Free plan is for development, testing and demos only


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | HERE Location Services | Stadia Maps | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 63 | Stadia Maps +6 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 86 | HERE Location Services +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 80 | Stadia Maps +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 40 | HERE Location Services +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 10 | 40 | Stadia Maps +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 80 | Stadia Maps +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 76 | Stadia Maps +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **58 · C** | **65.2 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | HERE Location Services | Stadia Maps |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | HERE Technologies | Stadia Maps |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1` | `https://api.stadiamaps.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price for geocoding | not published | $0.40 per 1,000 requests |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the HERE Platform Terms | BSD-3-Clause (MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | 13 | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2023-09-18 | 2026-03-18 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-08-29 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 23 stars, 6.1k npm/wk, 192 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (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.

**Stadia Maps.** Public OpenAPI spec (11.1.0) with generated TypeScript and Python SDKs. Free plan is for development, testing and demos only.

## 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`

### Stadia Maps

1. Send the key as `Authorization: Stadia-Auth <key>` rather than in the URL
2. Try Autocomplete v2 (1 credit) before a full geocode (20 credits) when a name is enough
3. Check the dashboard's credit balance before retrying a 429, since it may mean the month is spent
4. Don't write geocodes to a database on Free or Starter
5. Use bulk-geocode for addresses only, not POI names

## Questions

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

Stadia Maps scores 65.2 (B) on agent readiness against HERE Location Services's 58 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. HERE Location Services leads on security & auth.

### Do HERE Location Services and Stadia Maps need an API key?

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

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

Yes. HERE Location Services has a hosted endpoint at https://geocode.search.hereapi.com/v1 and Stadia Maps at https://api.stadiamaps.com.


## For agents

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

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