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ScrapeField vs the Google Places API

Google’s Places API is the official way to use Google Maps data, and the right one inside an app your users see. Its place search costs $32.00 per 1,000 calls; ours costs $2.34 → $1.32. Here is where each fits.

ScrapeField compared with Places API (New)
ScrapeFieldPlaces API (New)
Search for places, per 1,000$2.34 → $1.32 (3 credits)$32.00 (Text Search Pro), after 5,000 free a month; $35.00 with phone, website and rating (Enterprise), after 1,000
One place in full, per 1,000$2.34 → $1.32 (3 credits)$17.00 (Place Details Pro); $20.00 with Enterprise fields
Photos, per 1,000$3.12 → $1.76 (4 credits)$7.00, after 1,000 free a month
Reviews per placeA page at a time, from GET /v1/google-maps/reviewsAt most 5, inside Place Details
Star breakdown (how many 1s, 2s…)In the responseNot in the API
Field namesThe Places API’s ownThe Places API’s own
Official, SLA-backedNoYes

Checked 10 October 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page. Rechecked quarterly — tell us if something here is out of date and we will fix it.

Your month, on both

Places API (New)$223a month
ScrapeField$10.12–$17.94a month, 23,000 credits

Google’s prices are its Enterprise ones, which a list with phone numbers, websites and ratings needs, from its pricing page, read on 10 October 2026: the first tier, which falls after 100,000 calls a month. Its free calls come off first. Ours assume about 20 photos a call. Credits come in packs, from $39, and never expire.

Migrating a Place Details call

// Places API (New): Place Details
const res = await fetch(`https://places.googleapis.com/v1/places/${placeId}`, {
  headers: {
    "X-Goog-Api-Key": googleKey,
    "X-Goog-FieldMask": "id,displayName,formattedAddress,rating,userRatingCount",
  },
});
const p = await res.json();

p.displayName.text
p.formattedAddress
p.rating
p.userRatingCount
// ScrapeField
const res = await fetch(`https://api.scrapefield.com/v1/google-maps/place?place_id=${placeId}`, {
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${key}` },
});
const { data, meta } = await res.json();

data.name
data.formatted_address
data.rating
data.user_ratings_total

Three differences worth knowing before you start:

  • The same place_id works in both: ours is Google’s place ID, so the ids you have stored carry over unchanged.
  • Our field names are the Places API’s classic ones, which the New API writes in camelCase: formattedAddress is formatted_address, userRatingCount is user_ratings_total, and displayName.text is name. Code written for the classic Places API mostly carries over: its answer is under result and ours under data, and most of the field names are the same.
  • There is no field mask, and the price does not depend on the fields you ask for: every documented field is always in the answer, null where Google shows nothing, for 3 credits. The reviews come a page at a time from their own endpoint, all of them, not five.

Questions

Why is the difference so large?

Google prices the Places API for apps that show a few places to each user, not for building lists of thousands of businesses. For a list, the per-call price is what you pay; for an app, the free monthly usage and the terms may matter more than the price.

Is the data the same?

The field names are: a place from us is named the way the Places API names it, so moving code between the two is mostly a change of URL. What differs is what comes back. We page through a place’s reviews and return the star breakdown; the Places API returns at most five reviews and no breakdown.

Try it before you decide

Every endpoint has a playground that runs against the live API with no key and no account — real routing, real validation, real errors. If the response shape does not fit your code, you will know in about a minute.

Open the docsSee the credit table