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 OpenStreetMap Nominatim is live
Nominatim runs on OpenStreetMap data and has long been a default choice for teams that wanted a geocoding option without a commercial license attached. Usage policies around a shared public instance can make that arrangement harder to rely on as traffic grows, which is where a compatible, quota-aware host becomes useful.
Our Nominatim compatibility host reproduces the request parameters and response body of the original service exactly, aside from copyright, terms and privacy text, which is My Geocode's own. Requests built in Nominatim's format can be sent to our host unchanged, with the response returned in the same shape existing parsing code already expects.
Authentication follows our usual four methods here as well: an X-API-Key header, an Authorization: Bearer header, HTTP Basic auth with the key as the username, or a query parameter. Since Nominatim's public instance does not typically require a key at all, adding one here also means gaining a dedicated, trackable allowance instead of sharing an unmanaged public resource.
Pricing matches every other host and endpoint we run. Any address gets 2,500 free requests a day with no key required, counted per network. A key adds its own 2,500 free requests a day on top. Beyond both allowances, prepaid credit is €0.0001 a request, or an Unlimited package covers everything for €50 a month.
A shared public instance has to protect itself with usage policies that are conservative by necessity, since it cannot tell one caller's traffic apart from another's ahead of time. A key changes that: usage from one account is metered against its own allowance regardless of what else is happening on the service that day, which is a different guarantee than a shared resource can offer no matter how generous its stated policy is.
Quota headers are attached to every response on this host, which is a meaningful change from a shared public instance with no per-caller visibility: X-Quota-Limit, X-Quota-Used, X-Quota-Free-Remaining, X-Quota-Network-Used and X-Credits-Remaining are all included, so you always know exactly where you stand rather than guessing at an unpublished usage policy.
For projects that want more than the compatible response returns by default, adding mg_extras=1 to the request, or an X-MG-Extras header, layers optional extra fields on top without altering the base shape unless you ask for it.
For anyone unsure how a switch will behave in a particular country or region, the coverage page at /coverage/ documents where geocoding data is available in detail, which is a reasonable first stop before pointing production traffic at any new host, Nominatim-shaped or otherwise.
The host is documented at /compatibility/nominatim/, and general guidance on switching providers over is at /docs/compatibility/. For anyone relying on a public Nominatim instance today, this gives the same request shape with a dedicated allowance and clear quota headers attached.