Stadia Maps Alternative — maps.guru Compared (2026)
- Pricing verified July 2026
# Stadia Maps Alternative
The Stadia Maps alternative, flat pricing beyond the free tier
Compare maps.guru vs Stadia Maps: credit systems, GDPR positioning, and pricing beyond the free tier.
Stadia Maps pricing in 2026: 200,000 free credits per month (one vector tile = 1 credit, one geocode = 20 credits), but the free plan is non-commercial only. Commercial use starts at Starter, $20/month for 1,000,000 credits, with overage billed at 3 cents per 1,000 credits. maps.guru pricing: free forever with 50,000 tile requests per month, commercial use allowed on every plan, and Pro at $49/month (₹3,999) for 1,000,000 tiles plus 200,000 explicit geocoding requests with a hard quota and no overage.
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## Pricing comparison
MetricStadia Mapsmaps.guru
Free credits / month200,000 credits (tile = 1 credit, static map = 20 credits)50,000 tiles: no credit conversion needed
Free plan, commercial useNot allowed, Free plan non-commercialAllowed on all plans
Entry paid planStarter $20/mo, 1M credits; geocoding at 20 credits/callPro $49/mo: 1M tiles + 200K geocoding explicit quota
Geocoding cost (paid plan)Starter: 20 credits/call → effectively 50K geocodes on 1M creditsPro: 200K explicit geocoding quota (4× more)
Overage billingStarter: 3¢/1K credits; Standard: 2¢/1K creditsNone: hard quota, no overage
GDPR / privacy positioningExplicit GDPR focus, no behavioral ad data, EU serversCloudflare edge: GDPR compliant; no tracking built in
14-day Professional trial$250/mo plan free for 14 days, no CC requiredFree plan for prototyping; no time-limited trial

## Honest tradeoffs

### When Stadia Maps wins
Explicit GDPR privacy positioning, no behavioral ad data influence on map features
- No cap (Starter+), overage billing rather than hard stop; traffic spikes are served
- 14-day Professional trial ($250/mo plan) with no credit card required
- Standard $80/mo includes satellite basemaps, not available in maps.guru
- Single credit currency across all APIs simplifies unified budget modeling
- Privacy-first brand is a genuine differentiator for healthcare, legal, and EU B2B apps

### When maps.guru wins

- Commercial use allowed on free plan, Stadia Free is non-commercial only
- No credit-to-API conversion math, maps.guru quotas are straightforward
- Explicit geocoding quota of 200K at Pro vs ~50K effective on Stadia Starter
- Flat $49/mo Pro vs $80/mo Stadia Standard for comparable API access
- India ₹3,999/mo, no local currency from Stadia Maps
- Cloudflare 300+ PoPs globally vs Stadia's EU-primary infrastructure

## Documented gotchas

### Free plan is non-commercial, commercial products need Starter at $20/mo
Stadia Maps Free is explicitly non-commercial. The Starter plan at $20/mo is required for any revenue-generating application. Credit cap on Free means no overage, but the plan is designed for personal/hobby projects only.
Source: Stadia Maps Pricing

### Credit conversion makes geocoding cost opaque
On the Starter plan ($20/mo, 1M credits), geocoding costs 20 credits per call. That means 1M credits ÷ 20 = only 50K geocoding calls effectively, even though the headline is "1M credits." If you use a mix of tiles (1 credit each) and geocoding (20 credits each), tracking your effective budget requires ongoing calculation.
Source: Stadia Maps Pricing

## Frequently asked questions

### Is Stadia Maps or maps.guru better for GDPR compliance?
Both are GDPR-compliant. Stadia Maps explicitly markets its privacy positioning (no behavioral ad data, EU servers). maps.guru uses Cloudflare's infrastructure which is GDPR-compliant and does not inject tracking into tile requests. For apps in healthcare, legal, or EU B2B where explicit GDPR branding matters to customers, Stadia's explicit positioning may be a selling point.

### How does Stadia's credit system compare to maps.guru's quotas?
Stadia uses a unified credit system where tiles cost 1 credit and geocoding costs 20 credits. maps.guru uses explicit per-API quotas (1M tiles and 200K geocoding on Pro). The credit system can feel more flexible but requires conversion math; maps.guru's explicit quotas are more predictable.

### Can I get a trial of maps.guru's paid plan?
maps.guru offers a permanent free plan with 50,000 tile requests and 10,000 geocoding calls, no time limit, no credit card. Stadia offers a 14-day Professional trial ($250/mo plan). For most development and prototyping use cases, maps.guru's free plan is sufficient without a trial expiry.

## Mapping terms in this Stadia Maps comparison, defined
The vocabulary behind tiles, geocoding, and API pricing, in plain language.

### What is Vector tile?
A vector tile is a compressed binary chunk of map geometry (roads, buildings, labels) that the browser styles and renders at runtime, instead of downloading a pre-drawn image. Vector tiles let one dataset power unlimited visual styles and stay sharp at every zoom level.

### What is Basemap?
A basemap is the background map layer (roads, water, landuse, place labels) that your own data is drawn on top of. maps.guru serves basemaps as MapLibre-compatible vector tiles.

### What is Map style?
A map style is a JSON document that tells a renderer which colours, fonts, widths, and zoom rules to apply to each layer of a vector tile. maps.guru styles follow the MapLibre Style Specification, so they work in any MapLibre or Mapbox GL JS compatible renderer.

### What is Geocoding?
Geocoding is the process of converting a text address or place name into latitude and longitude coordinates. Reverse geocoding does the opposite: it converts coordinates into the nearest human-readable address.

### What is PMTiles?
PMTiles is a single-file archive format for map tiles that supports HTTP range requests, so a tile server can read one tile out of a multi-gigabyte archive without unpacking it. maps.guru stores its tile archives as PMTiles on Cloudflare R2.

### What is MapLibre GL JS?
MapLibre GL JS is an open-source WebGL map renderer, forked from Mapbox GL JS v1 after that project moved to a proprietary licence. It is the reference renderer for maps.guru styles and carries no per-render licence fee.

### What is Tile request?
A tile request is one HTTP fetch of a single map tile. A typical desktop map view loads roughly 10 to 20 tiles, and panning or zooming loads more, which is why tile quotas are counted in tens of thousands rather than page views.

### What is Static map?
A static map is a server-rendered PNG or JPEG image of a map at a fixed centre, zoom, and size. Static maps are used where an interactive map cannot run: email, PDF exports, Open Graph share cards, and AI chat replies.

## Sources

- Stadia Maps Pricing — Stadia Maps

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