# LocationIQ vs MapTiler Cloud (slim)

> MapTiler Cloud scores 62.1 (B) to LocationIQ's 60.3 (C) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-maptiler.md (~4,100 tokens) · this version ~2,180 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-maptiler.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-maptiler
- 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)

MapTiler Cloud scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against LocationIQ's 60.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. LocationIQ leads on reliability. Both do geocoding.

- LocationIQ: C 60.3, rank #658 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/locationiq.min.md
- MapTiler Cloud: B 62.1, rank #576 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/maptiler.min.md
- LocationIQ, good for A prototype or a cost-sensitive geocoding and routing job, with EU and US endpoints. Ahead on Reliability, 83 against 43. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install.
- MapTiler Cloud, good for Map tiles, static maps and worldwide geocoding with storable results for apps that also show a map, with EU data residency. Ahead on Security & auth, 64 against 55; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Maintenance & community, 70 against 3; Transparency & trust, 80 against 61.

| Category | LocationIQ | MapTiler Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 83 | 43 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 78 | 79 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 74 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 55 | 64 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 3 | 70 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 80 |

| Fact (where they differ) | LocationIQ | MapTiler Cloud |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | LocationIQ (Unwired Labs) | MapTiler AG |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://us1.locationiq.com/v1` | no (local only) |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-31 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2020-05-22 | no date given |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 115k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, MapTiler Cloud +67: 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.); MapTiler Cloud 70 (@maptiler/client 3.1.0 and @maptiler/sdk 4.2.0 on 2 October 2026, 35 days before this check, with the agent skill updated on 21 October (20). Platform updates entries for August (EU endpoint, key security) and September 2026 (terrain blending) plus the two October releases (20). A Discord community and support answered on a best-effort basis within two business days, per the Cloud terms. We didn't read GitHub issues (10). Official JavaScript client and SDK current, no Python client (12). The SDK repository runs unit and end-to-end tests in CI; we didn't check results (8). 20+20+10+12+8 = 70.)
- Reliability, LocationIQ +40: 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.); MapTiler Cloud 43 (Hosted lines. status.maptiler.com is a StatusCake public uptime report rather than a component incident page (15). Its data loads from app.statuscake.com, whose robots.txt answered with a redirect, so we didn't fetch it and read no history. That's our limit, not a finding, and the rubric gives 5 (5). Monthly request and session quotas are published per plan, but no per-second limit (5). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance found in the API reference, the OpenAPI spec or llms-full.txt (0). The pricing page lists a 99.9% SLA on the Custom plan, while the Cloud terms call availability best effort and point to a custom SLA (8). The public APIs are GA (10). 15+5+5+0+8+10 = 43.)
- Transparency & trust, MapTiler Cloud +19: 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).); MapTiler Cloud 80 (Editorial half only. Closed service with general and Cloud-specific terms under Swiss law, and SDKs under BSD 3-Clause and the skill under MIT (20). The privacy policy covers account and payment data and says legal-claim data is kept up to 10 years, but says nothing about how long API request logs are kept (15). A dated deprecation page for v3 maps and migration guides, with no written notice period (12). Hosting with OVHcloud and Google Firebase, data mainly in Switzerland and the EEA, and an EU-only endpoint. Google Analytics, Firebase and FastSpring named in the privacy policy (17). 20+15+12+17 = 64.)
- Payments & pricing, MapTiler Cloud +10: 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).); MapTiler Cloud 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1,000 prices for requests ($0.15) and sessions ($2.50) public without login (20). Free plan with no card, though only for testing and non-commercial use (20). Signup is a browser flow (0). 0+20+20+0 = 40.)
- Security & auth, MapTiler Cloud +9: LocationIQ 55 (Separate tokens per application, each with scopes, HTTP referrer or IP restrictions (up to 5 CIDRs), its own rate limits, and rotation from the dashboard, which earns 30. Less 10 because the OpenAPI spec defines only the key query parameter. The free plan gets one token (20). Scopes and per-token limits give least privilege, and nothing writes (17). Results are OpenStreetMap-derived text with no prompt-injection guidance (7). The /balance endpoint shows remaining quota. We didn't check per-call logs (4). security.txt valid to 1 January 2028, re-read on 4 November, pointing to hello@locationiq.com. No bug bounty or certification found (7).); MapTiler Cloud 64 (Revocable keys that can be limited to origins and a User-Agent substring and managed by the API keys API, and service tokens that sign requests so the token itself never travels, which earns 27. Less 10 because the key is 'always passed as a query parameter' (17). The public APIs are read-only, and account changes need a separate service token (16). Geocoding returns OpenStreetMap names and addresses, community-edited text, with no prompt-injection guidance (7). An Analytics API and account usage statistics (8). security.txt, a vulnerability disclosure policy and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification per the security page. No bug bounty found (16). 17+16+7+8+16 = 64.)