FAQ
Questions, seen and answered.
Getting started
Do I need a credit card to start?
No. Every service has a free monthly allowance. You only add a card to go beyond it.
What can I build with Goggle Places?
Predictive place, postcode and POI search; nearby lookups; route planning with drive, cycle, walk and public-transport directions; and hosted vector maps — all across Great Britain, behind one API key.
Which areas do you cover?
Great Britain for v1 — England, Scotland and Wales. Place names, postcodes, POIs, maps and routing are all GB-focused, so results are fast and relevant rather than watered down globally.
Keys & security
Publishable vs secret keys?
Publishable (pk) keys are safe in the browser and must be locked to your origins. Secret (sk) keys are server-side only. Both are scoped, rotatable and revocable.
How do I restrict a publishable key?
Publishable (pk) keys are locked to an HTTP referer/origin allow-list you set per key, and scoped to only the endpoints you need (for example predict and tiles). Keys are validated at the edge, so even cache hits are authorised.
What if a key is leaked?
Rotate or revoke it in the dashboard at any time — revoked keys stop working immediately at the edge. Publishable keys are origin-locked so they can’t be reused from another site, and secret keys should only ever live server-side.
Do you rate-limit requests?
Yes. Every API key gets a request rate limit (600 requests per minute) plus a monthly free allowance for each service. Short bursts above the rate limit return HTTP 429 — retry after a moment. Usage beyond your free allowance is billed as pay-as-you-go overage when a card is on file; without one, requests return HTTP 429 until you add a card or the allowance resets. See the Terms for how limits and billing are applied.
Data & licensing
Where does the map & place data come from?
OS Open Names / ONS (OGL), GeoNames (CC-BY), Wikidata (CC0) and OpenStreetMap / Protomaps (ODbL). Attribution is mandatory and rendered by default in the SDK.
Do I need to show attribution?
Yes. The underlying data is open-licensed (OpenStreetMap / Protomaps under ODbL, OS Open Names / ONS under OGL, GeoNames under CC-BY) and attribution is mandatory. Our SDK and widgets render it by default — please don’t remove or obscure it. See the Terms.
Can I cache or store results?
You can cache results for operational performance, but you can’t bulk-extract, resell, or build a competing dataset from the outputs. Where you publicly redistribute substantial ODbL data, its share-alike terms apply. See the Terms.
Billing & plans
How does pricing work?
Every service has a free monthly allowance. Beyond it you pay transparent per-1,000-request overage at your plan’s published rates, invoiced monthly in arrears. There’s no charge until you go over the free tier.
Will I be charged automatically?
A card is required to activate an account but isn’t charged unless your usage exceeds the free allowance. If it does, overage is billed to your card via Stripe. You can watch live usage and an overage estimate in the dashboard.
What happens if a payment fails?
We downgrade the account to the free allowance and pause overage until payment is resolved; usage already incurred remains payable. Add a working card in the dashboard to restore full service.