# NextBillion.ai vs Nominatim (slim)

> Nominatim scores 63.5 (B) to NextBillion.ai's 55.4 (C) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nextbillion-vs-nominatim.md (~3,900 tokens) · this version ~1,780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nextbillion-vs-nominatim.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nextbillion-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 NextBillion.ai's 55.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. NextBillion.ai leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do geocoding.

- NextBillion.ai: C 55.4, rank #874 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nextbillion.min.md
- Nominatim: B 63.5, rank #513 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nominatim.min.md
- NextBillion.ai, good for Fleet and delivery routing, distance matrices and route optimisation with truck profiles, plus geocoding and POI search, for companies ready for an annual contract. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 73 against 51; Maintenance & community, 73 against 60. 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 Reliability, 82 against 45; Payments & pricing, 60 against 20. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.

| Category | NextBillion.ai | Nominatim |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 45 | 82 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 73 | 51 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 77 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 73 | 60 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 58 | 59 |

| Fact (where they differ) | NextBillion.ai | Nominatim |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | NextBillion.ai Pte. Ltd. | Nominatim project (osm-search) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.nextbillion.io` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | none | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Tools exposed | 27 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-30 | 2026-10-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 2.1k PyPI/wk |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Nominatim +40: NextBillion.ai 20 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Pricing is by quote, with annual licences per order, asset or API call and no published unit price (0). A 7-day free trial with an API key and 'No credit card required' (20). A person signs up through the console or emails support for a key (0). 0+0+20+0 = 20.); 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.)
- Reliability, Nominatim +37: NextBillion.ai 45 (Hosted lines, for the REST APIs at api.nextbillion.io and the hosted MCP server. A status page at status.nextbillion.io, 'NextBillion.AI API Status', renders only in a browser, and its Statuspage-style JSON paths return 404, so we couldn't see its components (10) or read any history. That's our limit, not a finding, and the rubric gives 5 (5). The API reference states 2,400 queries a minute, or 40 a second, for continuous requests (15). Each endpoint's error table lists 429 as 'QPM or API request count quota reached', with no Retry-After or backoff guidance (5). No SLA found; the terms say access isn't warranted to be uninterrupted (0). The REST APIs are GA. The MCP server is at version 0.5.3 (10). 10+5+15+5+0+10 = 45.); Nominatim 82 (Read with the local-software lines, since the listing is the Nominatim server an operator runs. The public instance at nominatim.openstreetmap.org belongs to the OpenStreetMap Foundation and its usage policy caps it at one request a second, so it isn't graded as a hosted service. Official packages nominatim-db and nominatim-api on PyPI (5.3.3 on 14 October 2026, Python 3.9 or later) and installation guides for Ubuntu 22 and 24 (20). A public CI workflow runs unit and BDD tests on every push across Ubuntu 24 and 26 with PostgreSQL 13 to 18, and Windows unit tests. We couldn't see run results (20). Issue counts and reply times couldn't be read because the GitHub API was rate-limited for us; Sarah Hoffmann made 76 of the 106 commits since 8 August (12). A ChangeLog per release and semantic version numbers (15). Version 5.3.3 (15). 20+20+12+15+15 = 82.)
- Schema & documentation, NextBillion.ai +22: NextBillion.ai 73 (No OpenAPI document for the REST APIs was found in llms.txt or the docs. The hosted MCP server's 27 tools are defined with Zod schemas, so they carry typed JSON Schema inputs (15 of 25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown file for each docs page (10). Endpoint pages explain each parameter, and MCP tool descriptions say when not to use a tool, such as the geometry tools being straight-line rather than road distance (16). Parameter tables give types, allowed values and defaults, such as `types` and `limit` (default 10), though `in` packs several filters into one string (12). curl examples and a per-endpoint error table with causes (13). The MCP server has a dated changelog. No API changelog or versioned path was found (7). 15+10+16+12+13+7 = 73.); 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.)
- Maintenance & community, NextBillion.ai +13: NextBillion.ai 73 (MCP server 0.5.3 on 30 October 2026 (30). Eleven tagged MCP releases between 7 October and 30 October, adding hosted mode, truck routing and geometry tools (20). Support by email, a public MCP repository with a changelog, but no public API changelog (8). The MCP server isn't in the official MCP registry, and we didn't check the mobile SDK versions (7). The MCP repository runs CI with unit and end-to-end tests (8). 30+20+8+7+8 = 73.); 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.)