What we shipped this month: geocoding, IP, time zone and more
A roundup of recent work across the API: new compatibility hosts, faster time zone and elevation lookups, dashboard features, and clearer quota visibility.
Drop-in compatibility with HERE Geocoding and Search is live
HERE Geocoding and Search sits behind a fair amount of logistics, automotive and location software, often as one piece among many rather than the whole system. When a provider is embedded that deeply, evaluating an alternative usually means weighing engineering cost against uncertain benefit. Our HERE compatibility host is built to remove the engineering cost from that equation entirely.
The host reproduces HERE's request parameters and response body exactly, with the only differences being copyright, terms and privacy text, which is ours rather than the original provider's. Client code that already builds HERE-shaped requests and reads HERE-shaped responses does not need to be touched. It only needs a different host name and a My Geocode key.
That key works the same flexible way across every host we run, including this one: an X-API-Key header, an Authorization: Bearer header, HTTP Basic auth using the key as the username, or a query parameter. Use whichever your existing client already sends, since all four are recognized on every endpoint and every compatibility host without exception.
Underneath the compatible surface, the pricing is ours, and it is the same everywhere on the platform. Any address gets 2,500 free requests a day with no key at all, counted per network so the free tier maps to something like a single site or office rather than to every individual device passing through it. A key adds its own separate 2,500 free requests a day. Past both allowances, prepaid credit runs at €0.0001 a request, or an Unlimited package covers usage for €50 a month, with no premium for using a compatibility host over a native endpoint.
Every response, compatible or not, carries our full set of quota headers: X-Quota-Limit, X-Quota-Used, X-Quota-Free-Remaining, X-Quota-Network-Used, X-Credits-Remaining, X-Key-IPs-Used, X-Key-IPs-Limit and X-Quota-Reset. That gives a level of usage transparency the original API does not build in, without changing the body of the response itself.
If a project needs more than what the compatible shape returns, adding mg_extras=1 to the request, or sending an X-MG-Extras header, layers optional fields such as ground elevation on top, entirely opt in. Skip it, and the response matches HERE's format precisely.
The compatibility host is documented at /compatibility/here/, with a broader look at how switching works across all seventeen hosts at /docs/compatibility/. A single test call is usually enough to see whether it fits.