Which Places API service should I use?

The Places API offers a few different ways to search for one or more places.  Given the variety of options, it can be difficult to decide which service to use.  Let's start with a set of scenarios to help guide you towards the service that makes most sense for your use case.

I know the place I'm looking for but need more details (location, address, phone number).

• "Dairy Queen Eden Prairie", "Eiffel Tower", "198 E Delaware Pl, Chicago", "712-356-9884"
• Places Autocomplete, Find Place

I need to capture a place from my application user to initiate a search or center the map.

• "Metropolitan Museum of Art", "1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington"
• Places Autocomplete

I'm new to the area and would like to explore what's around.

• "Show me famous landmarks within 10 miles of the airport", "Houston restaurants"
• Nearby Search, Text Search

I know the area but have never searched for this type of place before.

• "Flea markets New York", "Chiropractors El Paso county"
• Nearby Search, Text Search

I want to show my application user interesting places near them.

• Nearby Search

Which place am I currently at?

• Current Place (Places SDK for Android and iOS)

To further help you decide on the right service, check out the content below where we provide more details on each Places API service.

Place Search

Place Search finds places based on proximity or text input.

Only Find Place allows for field filtering; Nearby and Text Search always include Basic, Contact, and Atmosphere categories and you are charged accordingly.

Place Autocomplete

Place Autocomplete is a service that helps a user find a single place.  It returns a list of up to 5 predictions given search text string and the candidate matches are ordered based on the perceived relevance.  It is meant to be used interactively in the following flow:

1. Users types in address/place name.
2. Application calls Autocomplete to get list of predictions.
3. User selects desired result from list of predictions.
4. Application calls Place Details with place_id from selected prediction.

Autocomplete is billed in two different ways: per-session or per-request.  Per-session billing groups both the query (prediction) and selection (Place Details) phases of the user autocomplete session based on a session token and incurs a single charge.

All Places API services allow for location biasing in some fashion.  Location biasing influences the results based on a specific geographic area.  All pricing shown is for Tier 1 (0-100k requests per month) and based on the Maps Platform pricing schedule.  They are current as of the time of this article.