Google increased the prices of Google Maps API, limited the free tiers, and now requires billing for all. Developers and entrepreneurs are not happy. Starting on June 21, all projects using Google Maps need to enable billing with a credit card and need to have a valid API key for all projects. From 18 individual APIs, Google simplified to 3 core products – Maps, Routes and Places – and Standard and Premium plans were merged in one pay-as-you go pricing plan.

In the new pricing, developers will receive $200 of monthly usage for free. Google estimates that most will have monthly usage that will keep you within this free tier.

Before the price changes, on the standard plan, developers could do up to 25000 free requests per day. After the free tier the price was $0.50 USD per 1,000 additional requests, up to 100,000 daily, if billing was enabled.

On the new Google Maps API prices, after the free tier, the price went from 0.5 dollars per 1000 calls to more than 5 dollars. Example: Embed Advanced (with search included) will be 14 dollars per 1000 calls, and the free tier is up to 14000 calls per month. Before, the free tier was 750000 calls per month (25k per day), and 0.5 dollars per 1000 calls.

And as developers need to enable billing to use Google Maps API, many are afraid of suffering a surge of usage and have a huge bill to pay.

Google prepared a guide for existing users to help them on the transition.