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Head to head · Geocoding · October 2026 research run

Radar vs Stadia Maps

Stadia Maps scores 65.2 (B) on agent readiness against Radar's 53.3 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Radar leads on reliability and security & auth. Both do geocoding.

Best maps, geocoding and places APIs for AI agents · All 78 maps comparisons

RadarRadar Labs · HTTP API D53.3/100#713 of 950 Stadia MapsStadia Maps · HTTP API B65.2/100#325 of 950

Which one, for what

Radar D

Good for A company that already has a Radar contract, or wants geofencing and trip tracking with geocoding and routing on one key.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 63
  • Security & auth, 56 against 40

Watch for

The pricing page says Radar has no free tier and every plan is an annual commitment set by quote

Stadia Maps B

Good for Cost-sensitive geocoding, routing and tiles on OpenStreetMap data, with traffic-influenced routing since April 2026.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 86 against 50
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 65
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 10
  • Transparency & trust, 76 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Free plan is for development, testing and demos only

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runRadarStadia MapsEdge
Reliability16%207063Radar +7
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25086Stadia Maps +36
Agent ergonomics13%16.26580Stadia Maps +15
Security & auth14%17.55640Radar +16
Payments & pricing10%12.51040Stadia Maps +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87780Stadia Maps +3
Transparency & trust7%8.85576Stadia Maps +21
Negative events≤15-20
Total53.3 · D65.2 · B

Facts side by side

FactRadarStadia Maps
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorRadar LabsStadia Maps
Hosted endpointhttps://api.radar.io/v1https://api.stadiamaps.com
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
Price for geocodingnot published$0.40 per 1,000 requests
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Radar's Terms of Use. The web SDK in radarlabs/radar-sdk-js is Apache-2.0BSD-3-Clause (MCP server)
Tools exposednone6
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-142026-09-30
Terms last updated2023-05-242026-03-18
Privacy policy last updated2025-05-132026-10-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularitynone23 stars, 6.1k npm/wk, 192 PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Radar

Radar documents 36 REST operations in Markdown with a rate limit on each, and its status feed shows two short API incidents in 90 days. Access is sales-led. The pricing page says there is no free tier, every plan is an annual commitment, and no OpenAPI description or API changelog was found.

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

Radar

  1. Send the key in the Authorization header with no Bearer prefix, and call https://api.radar.io/v1, not radar.com
  2. Use a publishable key for geocoding, search and routing. Keep the secret key for users, trips, geofences and beacons
  3. Call /v1/search/autocomplete for partial addresses and place names. /v1/geocode/forward is documented as best for complete addresses
  4. Set units=metric on routing calls. The default is imperial, with distances in feet
  5. Treat 429 as one of three things (rate limit, no state change or selective throttling) and 402 as usage exceeded. No Retry-After header is documented
  6. Do not keep geocoding, autocomplete or place results for more than 30 days

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

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Radar or Stadia Maps?

Stadia Maps scores 65.2 (B) on agent readiness against Radar's 53.3 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Radar leads on reliability and security & auth.

Do Radar and Stadia Maps need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Radar and Stadia Maps without installing anything?

Yes. Radar has a hosted endpoint at https://api.radar.io/v1 and Stadia Maps at https://api.stadiamaps.com.

Other comparisons with Radar or Stadia Maps

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