# LocationIQ vs Nominatim (slim)

> Nominatim scores 63.5 (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-nominatim.md (~3,650 tokens) · this version ~1,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-nominatim.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-nominatim
- 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)

Nominatim scores 63.5 (B) on agent readiness against LocationIQ's 60.3 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. LocationIQ leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do geocoding.

- LocationIQ: C 60.3, rank #658 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/locationiq.min.md
- Nominatim: B 63.5, rank #513 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nominatim.min.md
- LocationIQ, good for A prototype or a cost-sensitive geocoding and routing job, with EU and US endpoints. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 78 against 51; Security & auth, 55 against 50. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card.
- Nominatim, good for Self-hosted worldwide geocoding from OpenStreetMap data with no per-call cost or storage limits beyond ODbL. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 30; Maintenance & community, 60 against 3. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | LocationIQ | Nominatim |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 83 | 82 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 78 | 51 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 74 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 55 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 3 | 60 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 59 |

| Fact (where they differ) | LocationIQ | Nominatim |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | LocationIQ (Unwired Labs) | Nominatim project (osm-search) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://us1.locationiq.com/v1` | no (local only) |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | none | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-14 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-31 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2020-05-22 | no document linked |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 2.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Nominatim +57: 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.); Nominatim 60 (Release 5.3.3 on 14 October 2026, 23 days before this check (30). Only one release in the 90 days from 8 August, against 106 commits on the default branch; commits aren't counted as releases (0). Commits from the lead maintainer and seven or more contributors since August, but we couldn't read issue reply times (12). The nominatim-api Python library is current with the server (10). CI on every push, current PostgreSQL and Python versions (8). 30+0+12+10+8 = 60.)
- Payments & pricing, Nominatim +30: 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).); Nominatim 60 (Self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free software with nothing to buy (20 + 20 + 20). The public instance is also free and keyless, within its usage policy. 0+20+20+20 = 60.)
- Schema & documentation, LocationIQ +27: 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).); Nominatim 51 (No OpenAPI or machine-readable contract (0). nominatim.org/llms.txt returns 404, and the manual is HTML, though its Markdown sources sit in the repository's docs folder (0). The API reference explains each endpoint and parameter and when not to use one, such as the details endpoint being for debugging (14). Types, enums and limits are documented, such as format, layer and limit (at most 40), but there's no schema to validate against (12). Example queries and outputs per endpoint, with errors described in prose (10). A versioned manual per release, a ChangeLog and a migration guide (15). 0+0+14+12+10+15 = 51.)
- Security & auth, LocationIQ +5: 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).); Nominatim 50 (The server has no authentication of its own; an operator puts it behind their own proxy. The public instance takes no key and identifies callers by User-Agent or Referer (5). Every endpoint reads, so there's nothing to approve (18). Results are OpenStreetMap names and tags, community-edited text, with no prompt-injection guidance (7). Query logging to a file is available through NOMINATIM_LOG_FILE and off by default (8). SECURITY.md gives security@nominatim.org, an acknowledgement within 3 work days, a disclosure process and two years of security updates per release. No bug bounty (12). 5+18+7+8+12 = 50.)