# Stadia Maps vs TomTom Maps APIs + MCP

> Stadia Maps has a score of 65.5 (B) against TomTom Maps APIs + MCP's 55.1 (C). Both do geo geocode. The largest gap is reliability, 33 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Stadia Maps has a score of 65.5 (B) against TomTom Maps APIs + MCP's 55.1 (C). Both do geo geocode. The largest gap is reliability, 33 points.

- 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
- TomTom Maps APIs + MCP: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #318 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tomtom.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tomtom.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Stadia Maps for reliability (+33), schema & documentation (+15), payments & pricing (+15), transparency & trust (+18).

Pick TomTom Maps APIs + MCP for security & auth (+11), maintenance & community (+6).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Stadia Maps | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 63 | 30 | Stadia Maps +33 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 71 | Stadia Maps +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 78 | Stadia Maps +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 40 | 51 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 25 | Stadia Maps +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 86 | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 61 | Stadia Maps +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **65.5 · B** | **55.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Stadia Maps | TomTom Maps APIs + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Stadia Maps | TomTom |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.stadiamaps.com` | `https://api.tomtom.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | BSD-3-Clause (MCP server) | Apache-2.0 (MCP server) |
| Tools exposed | 6 | 15 |
| 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 | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-23 |
| Popularity | 23 stars, 6.1k npm/wk, 192 PyPI/wk | 55 stars, 996 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Stadia Maps.** Public OpenAPI spec (11.1.0) with generated TypeScript and Python SDKs. Free plan is for development, testing and demos only.

**TomTom Maps APIs + MCP.** No-card free allowance of 20,000 geocodes, 20,000 reverse geocodes and 20,000 routes a month. Terms, rate limits and deprecation policy render client-side, so storage rules and notice periods are unverified.

## Before you call either

### 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

### 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. Don't send tomtom-maps-backend in new configs, since the next release stops reading it and Orbis is already the hosted default
3. Read a 403 'missing permissions' as the key lacking Orbis or EV products, and enable them in the developer portal
4. Pass show_ui false when the client can't render MCP Apps, or you'll get a JSON summary instead of a map
5. Redact the key parameter before logging REST URLs

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