How to implement Free Reverse Geocoding Javascript API without API Key

How to implement Free Reverse Geocoding Javascript API without API Key

BigDataCloud December 16, 2019

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Hyper-personalisation has become a key ingredient in delivering a great customer experience and carrying out effective targeted marketing campaigns. At the heart of hyper-personalisation, lies the user’s location data. All the digital marketing ads, e-commerce platforms, sharing-based services, content delivery systems and many more are based on location data. Hence, identifying user’s location information has become of paramount importance to businesses. 

Reverse geocoding is a key method of determining the user's location information like postal codes, city, state, and country, by using only the point geographic coordinates (latitude & longitude). These point coordinates are captured using GPS, cell tower signals or WiFi traces. 

However, implementing this method isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Many players in the market provide API services for converting these data into a physical address. But, not all the services have the same quality results.

Google is the most popular public reverse geocoding service provider in the market, but it has its own downsides. Their free unlimited API service is limited to only Android app developers, hence for other systems, the cost can be substantial. Further, their services are not accessible from selected regions like China. In addition, the service is quite slow (ranging up to hundreds of milliseconds) which can impact the performance of your applications and user experience. 

Besides Google, there are other reverse geocoding service providers in the market. But, most of these services use the same free open source data and technologies, as a result, they have similar drawbacks. The technique used by them, including Google,  relies on associating the location to the nearest road segment, which can sometimes deliver wrong results if the user is not in the urban areas. Therefore, even though they can be cheaper than Google, they are still very slow and can result in inadequate solutions.

How is BigDataCloud’s Free Reverse Geocoding different?

BigDataCloud's Reverse Geocoding API is the first to deliver administrative/non-administrative boundaries-based results and as such, it is the perfect choice when you need to resolve a user's practical area such as their city, state or country rather than their street address. 

The API not only offers detailed locality information based on your user’s latitude & longitude data, but it is also exceptionally fast with each response being generated with sub-millisecond timing, allowing for true real-time applications.

The API aims for city/suburb level accuracy, however, it can provide full postal code level coverage for the U.S., U.K. and Australia region, and partial postal code coverage for the rest of the world.

Benefits of BigDataCloud’s Free Reverse Geocoding

  • Delivers Administrative/non-administrative boundaries-based results
  • Provides detailed locality information of a user
  • Postal code level accuracy for the U.S, Great Britain, and Australia.
  • Exceptionally fast response time (sub-millisecond)
  • Supports 147 common world languages.
  • Unlimited FREE Client-Side Reverse Geocoding to City API
  • Affordable Server-Side Reverse Geocoding API
  • Hence, for any developers who need real-time and accurate user location, BigDataCloud is the perfect solution.

How to get started with BigDataCloud’s Free Reverse Geocoding

Developer looking at the code - Reverse geocoding Api

BigDataCloud provides the most flexible pricing package for developers who are looking to implement for their non-commercial or commercial projects. 

For the benefit of developers, we have API service which requires no account creation or API key. You can readily implement them on your client-side with few lines of code.

  • No Javascript Dependencies
  • No API Key required
  • No Account creation required
  • This Client-Side API is free for both non-commercial/commercial use
  • No throttling and API limits

This API service is only for client-side use. We provide two methods of implementing the API:

  • Manual Installation
  • CDN Installation

Hence, if you are building an application that can use client-side API like your browser or mobile apps, then you can implement the reverse geocoding API for free with no restrictions. However, we do want our developers to be mindful of the API and to not abuse the service. 

However, if your project requires the implementation of server-side API then you can start for FREE with 50,000 queries/month and pay the minimum to upgrade your limits. Learn more about server-side reverse geocoding API.

Compared to the market, this is the most flexible and affordable solution for commercial and non-commercial use. 

You can find detailed instructions on our GitHub page - js-reverse-geocode-client.

For more detailed package information, you can visit our webpage on Reverse Geocoding API. 

{
    "latitude": 37.42158889770508,
    "longitude": -122.08370208740234,
    "localityLanguageRequested": "en",
    "continent": "North America",
    "continentCode": "NA",
    "countryName": "United States of America",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "principalSubdivision": "California",
    "locality": "Mountain View",
    "postcode": "94043",
    "localityInfo": {
        "administrative": [
            {
                "order": 1,
                "adminLevel": 2,
                "name": "United States of America",
                "description": "country in North America",
                "isoName": "United States of America (the)",
                "isoCode": "US",
                "wikidataId": "Q30"
            },
            {
                "order": 2,
                "adminLevel": 4,
                "name": "California",
                "description": "state of the United States of America",
                "isoName": "California",
                "isoCode": "US-CA",
                "wikidataId": "Q99"
            },
            {
                "order": 4,
                "adminLevel": 6,
                "name": "Santa Clara County",
                "description": "county in California, United States",
                "wikidataId": "Q110739"
            },
            {
                "order": 5,
                "adminLevel": 8,
                "name": "Mountain View",
                "description": "city in Santa Clara County, California, United States",
                "wikidataId": "Q486860"
            }
        ],
        "informative": [
            {
                "order": 0,
                "name": "North America",
                "description": "continent on the Earth's northwestern quadrant",
                "isoCode": "NA",
                "wikidataId": "Q49"
            },
            {
                "order": 3,
                "name": "Pacific Coast Ranges",
                "description": "mountain ranges in North America",
                "wikidataId": "Q660304"
            },
            {
                "order": 6,
                "name": "94043",
                "description": "postal code"
            },
            {
                "order": 7,
                "name": "Googleplex",
                "description": "building complex in California, United States",
                "wikidataId": "Q694178"
            }
        ]
    }
}
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