# LocationIQ vs Stadia Maps

> Stadia Maps has a score of 65.5 (B) against LocationIQ's 60.6 (C). Both do geo geocode. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 77 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-stadia-maps
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-stadia-maps.md (~1,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-vs-stadia-maps.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/locationiq-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: 2026-10-04

Stadia Maps has a score of 65.5 (B) against LocationIQ's 60.6 (C). Both do geo geocode. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 77 points.

- LocationIQ: grade C, 60.6/100, rank #243 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/locationiq.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/locationiq.json
- Stadia Maps: grade B, 65.5/100, rank #171 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/stadia-maps.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/stadia-maps.json

## Which one, for what

Pick LocationIQ for reliability (+20), security & auth (+15).

Pick Stadia Maps for schema & documentation (+8), agent ergonomics (+6), payments & pricing (+10), maintenance & community (+77), transparency & trust (+14).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | LocationIQ | Stadia Maps | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 83 | 63 | LocationIQ +20 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 86 | Stadia Maps +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 80 | Stadia Maps +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 40 | LocationIQ +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Stadia Maps +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 3 | 80 | Stadia Maps +77 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 79 | Stadia Maps +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.6 · C** | **65.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | LocationIQ | Stadia Maps |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | LocationIQ (Unwired Labs) | Stadia Maps |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://us1.locationiq.com/v1` | `https://api.stadiamaps.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | BSD-3-Clause (MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | none | 23 stars, 6.1k npm/wk, 192 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

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

**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

### 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

### 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

## Other comparisons with LocationIQ or Stadia Maps

- [Geoapify Location Platform + MCP vs LocationIQ](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geoapify-vs-locationiq.md)
- [Geoapify Location Platform + MCP vs Stadia Maps](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/geoapify-vs-stadia-maps.md)
- [Google Maps Platform + Grounding Lite MCP vs LocationIQ](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-maps-platform-vs-locationiq.md)
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