# Nominatim vs TomTom Maps APIs + MCP

> Nominatim scores 63.5 (B) to TomTom Maps's 45.9 (E) for geocoding. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nominatim-vs-tomtom
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nominatim-vs-tomtom.md (~4,050 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Nominatim scores 63.5 (B) on agent readiness against TomTom Maps APIs + MCP's 45.9 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. TomTom Maps APIs + MCP leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do geocoding.

- Nominatim: grade B, 63.5/100, rank #513 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/nominatim.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/nominatim.json
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP: grade E, 45.9/100, rank #1185 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tomtom.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tomtom.json
- Best maps, geocoding and places APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/maps/index.md
- All 153 maps comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/maps/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Nominatim (B)

Good for: Self-hosted worldwide geocoding from OpenStreetMap data with no per-call cost or storage limits beyond ODbL.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 82 against 15
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 25

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where TomTom Maps APIs + MCP loses 6 points for them

Watch for: No OpenAPI spec and no llms.txt

### TomTom Maps APIs + MCP (E)

Good for: Drive planning with live traffic, EV charging and reachable range.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 71 against 51
- Maintenance & community, 86 against 60

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Terms, rate limits and deprecation policy couldn't be read, so storage rules and notice periods are unverified


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Nominatim +67

- 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.
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP (15): TomTom's API status page sits on tomtom.service-now.com, whose robots.txt disallows every path on 4 November, so the earlier status readings are struck (0). With no history we may read, the record scores 5. No published QPS limits or 429 guidance were found on the docs pages we read on 1 October; TomTom's acceptable use policy now bars robots from its websites, so they weren't re-read (0). The MCP maps a 429 to a typed rate-limit error with a message, and we found nothing on Retry-After (5, the earlier partial kept). No SLA found (0). Orbis APIs went GA on 8 July 2026, but the remote MCP server is in public preview and the README says some Orbis and EV services may not be enabled on every account (5, kept). 0+5+0+5+0+5 = 15.

### Payments & pricing: Nominatim +35

- 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.
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP (25): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Free allowances are public, but the pricing page re-read on 2 October showed no paid rate as a number, only a euro estimator and a contact-sales link (5 of 20, kept). A no-card free allowance of 20,000 geocodes, 20,000 reverse geocodes and 20,000 routes a month, with Search and Matrix at 2,500 (20). Signup is a browser flow (0). The pricing page is on a host whose acceptable use policy now bars robots, so it wasn't re-read on 4 November. 0+5+20+0 = 25.

### Maintenance & community: TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +26

- 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.
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP (86): MCP v1.6.15 on 2 November 2026 (30). Eight tags since 6 August, v1.6.8 (15 September) to v1.6.15 (2 November) (20). Pull requests from several maintainers merged up to 3 November 2026. We couldn't see issue reply times from git (18, kept). The package is at 1.6.15 in its repository; the 30 September note that it wasn't in the official MCP registry came from the registry's JSON API and is struck (8, kept). CI runs type checks, lint, build, end-to-end tests and a Veracode scan, with dependabot (10). 30+20+18+8+10 = 86.

### Schema & documentation: TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +20

- 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.
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP (71): No public OpenAPI that we found. The MCP's tools have Zod schemas with described fields (22). docs.tomtom.com/llms.txt indexes about 180 pages, many as .md, per the 2 October check, not re-read on 4 November (10). Tool descriptions are mostly one line, with little on when not to use a tool (12). Typed fields with constraints, and since 1.6.12 the search, routing and EV tools list their valid values from the maps-sdk (11, kept). We couldn't read the REST error reference. The MCP returns typed errors per status code, and since 1.6.13 tells a 401 from a 403 (8). Versioned REST paths; the MCP CHANGELOG.md has dated entries from 1.6.11 (5 October 2026) to 1.6.14 and says 1.1.1 to 1.6.10 have none (8, kept). 22+10+12+11+8+8 = 71.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Nominatim | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 82 | 15 | Nominatim +67 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 71 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 78 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 50 | 51 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 25 | Nominatim +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 86 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +26 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 59 | 58 | Nominatim +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -6 | |
| **Total** | | **63.5 · B** | **45.9 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Nominatim | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nominatim project (osm-search) | TomTom |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.tomtom.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | GPL-3.0-or-later | Apache-2.0 (MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | none | 13 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-14 | 2026-11-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 2.1k PyPI/wk | 55 stars, 996 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Nominatim

No score change since it was listed.

### TomTom Maps APIs + MCP

- -9.0 on 4 November 2026 (C to E): product, new evidence
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Nominatim.** Nominatim is the open-source OpenStreetMap geocoder, free to run with a documented search, reverse and lookup API, tested releases and two years of security support per release. It has no OpenAPI spec, no built-in authentication, and the public instance allows one request a second and restricts LLM-suggested use, so agents at scale need their own server.

**TomTom Maps APIs + MCP.** No-card free allowance of 20,000 geocodes, 20,000 reverse geocodes and 20,000 routes a month, with an official MCP server released about weekly. Terms, rate limits and the deprecation policy couldn't be read, the status page bars our reader, and MCP patch releases in October removed tools and inputs without notice.

## Before you call either

### Nominatim

1. Don't send bulk or repeated queries to nominatim.openstreetmap.org; keep to one request a second, cache results and set an identifying User-Agent
2. Tell the user about the OSMF usage policy before suggesting the public instance, as the policy requires
3. For regular or large jobs, run your own Nominatim or use a commercial provider listed on the Nominatim wiki
4. Pass format=jsonv2 or geojson and limit, since omitting format sends the request to the web UI
5. Attribute OpenStreetMap and respect the ODbL share-alike terms when storing results

### TomTom Maps APIs + MCP

1. Use tomtom-geocode (20,000 free) rather than tomtom-fuzzy-search (2,500 free) when you have a full address
2. Pin `@tomtom-org/tomtom-mcp` to a version, since patch releases have removed tools and changed inputs
3. Page search results with `cursor` and the previous response's `nextCursor`, not `ofs`, from 1.6.12
4. Read a 403 as the account or key not covering the API, and don't retry it; a 401 means a missing or unknown key
5. Redact the key parameter before logging REST URLs

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Nominatim or TomTom Maps APIs + MCP?

Nominatim scores 63.5 (B) on agent readiness against TomTom Maps APIs + MCP's 45.9 (E), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. TomTom Maps APIs + MCP leads on schema & documentation and maintenance & community.

### Do Nominatim and TomTom Maps APIs + MCP need an API key?

Nominatim needs no key. TomTom Maps APIs + MCP needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Nominatim and TomTom Maps APIs + MCP without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Nominatim. TomTom Maps APIs + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://api.tomtom.com.

### Are Nominatim and TomTom Maps APIs + MCP open source?

Nominatim is open source (GPL-3.0-or-later). No open-source release is listed for TomTom Maps APIs + MCP.


## For agents

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

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