Google Places API
Provides place search, place details, nearby search, autocomplete, and place photo APIs for finding businesses, points of interest, and geographic locations. Returns structured data including address, hours, reviews, ratings, photos, and contact info.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
HTTPS enforced. API keys should be restricted by IP and API type in Cloud Console - unrestricted keys are a significant security risk. No OAuth scopes for granular access control. Google Cloud IAM provides project-level security. Keys passed as query params can appear in server logs.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs to find or look up places, validate addresses, or enrich location data with business details like hours, ratings, and photos.
Avoid When
Cost is a constraint - the Places API is expensive at scale. Consider OpenStreetMap-based alternatives like Nominatim for high-volume lookups.
Use Cases
- • Building location-aware agents that find nearby restaurants, hotels, or services
- • Address autocomplete and validation in agent-driven form flows
- • Fetching business hours and contact info for research or scheduling agents
- • Enriching lead data with verified business information and reviews
- • Geofencing and proximity-based recommendations in travel or logistics agents
Not For
- • Turn-by-turn navigation (use Google Maps Directions API)
- • Bulk geocoding of large address lists at low cost
- • Accessing real-time traffic or transit data
Interface
Authentication
API key passed as query parameter or HTTP header (X-Goog-Api-Key). Keys are restricted by API type, IP/referrer, and usage quotas in Google Cloud Console. No OAuth required for server-side use.
Pricing
Requires billing account with credit card even for free tier. $200 monthly credit covers moderate usage. Costs escalate quickly at scale - a busy agent could exhaust the free tier in hours. New Places API (v1) has different pricing from legacy Places API.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Legacy Places API and new Places API (v1) are different endpoints with different field names and request formats - easy to mix up
- ⚠ Field masking is required in new Places API v1 - omitting X-Goog-FieldMask header returns minimal data and still bills for full request
- ⚠ place_id values are not stable forever - Google can reassign place IDs, agents should not cache them indefinitely
- ⚠ OVER_QUERY_LIMIT is returned when per-second rate is exceeded, not just daily quota - agents need both short-term and long-term backoff
- ⚠ Photo references expire and must be re-fetched; agents cannot store photo URLs long-term
- ⚠ Billing activation required before first API call - requests fail silently with PROJECT_NOT_AUTHORIZED if billing not enabled
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.