Google Maps vs Waze for geodata scraping: which API and dataset fits your use case?

Hook: Why this comparison matters for engineers and data teams

Extracting reliable geodata at scale feels simple until you run into rate limits, expensive per-request pricing, or a Terms of Service clause that forbids bulk storage. If your product depends on accurate routing, minute-level traffic, fresh POI metadata, or navigation telemetry for analytics, picking the wrong data source wastes developer time and budget.

This guide gives a pragmatic, technical comparison of Google Maps API vs Waze for four core datasets — routing, traffic, POI, and navigation telemetry — and shows practical scraping alternatives, compliance constraints, and cost and quality tradeoffs tuned for 2026.

Executive summary — most important takeaways (inverted pyramid)

• Google Maps is the general-purpose, enterprise-ready platform: best for rich POI data, geocoding, and production-grade directions with baked-in traffic-aware ETA. It has predictable SLAs and broad SDK support but is typically the most expensive and comes with restrictive caching/licensing rules.
• Waze excels at crowd-sourced, near-real-time incident data and traffic anomalies — ideal when you need fast detection of accidents, hazards, or live jams. Access to raw Waze feeds is limited to partner programs; it is not a drop-in replacement for Google Maps routing or POI data.
• For cost-sensitive or offline-first systems, combine OpenStreetMap (OSM) + OSRM/GraphHopper for routing and maintain a separate pipeline for traffic signals (third-party or homegrown). This avoids vendor lock-in but requires operational work.
• Scraping either app (web UI or mobile APIs) is legally risky and technically fragile. Prefer official APIs or partner programs (Waze Connected Citizens Program, Google Maps Platform) or licensed data from HERE/TomTom for commercial use.

Context & 2026 trends you need to plan for

In 2025–2026 the geodata landscape continued to evolve along three axes:

• Monetization and limits: Major providers increased granularity of paid tiers and tightened caching rules. Expect per-request billing to remain the dominant pricing model.
• Real-time demand: Demand for sub-minute traffic signals and incident stream ingestion rose across delivery, marketplaces, and public-sector use cases.
• Privacy and compliance: Newer privacy regulations and a push for on-device anonymization have made access to raw telemetry more restricted; partnerships and data agreements are increasingly required for telemetry-level feeds.

How to read this comparison

We break down each dataset (POI, routing, traffic, navigation telemetry) into the following technical dimensions:

1. Available endpoints — official APIs and public partner feeds.
2. Data freshness & granularity — how quickly the source updates and the level of detail.
3. Licensing & compliance — legal constraints on storage, display, and redistribution.
4. Cost & API limits — practical notes about billing, quotas, and rate limits (relative guidance).
5. Scraping / alternative strategies — when and how to fallback to OSM, third-party vendors, or reverse-engineered approaches (and the risks).

1) POI (Places) — business listings, attributes, and enrichment

Available endpoints

• Google Maps API: Places API (Place Search, Place Details, Autocomplete), Geocoding API. Rich attributes: phone, website, opening hours, photos, categories, user ratings.
• Waze: Waze is not positioned as a POI provider. Waze app displays some business pins but has no public, feature-complete Places API comparable to Google Places; business integration is via developer/advertising channels.
• Alternatives: OpenStreetMap (via Overpass API), commercial POI vendors (HERE, TomTom, Yelp Fusion, Foursquare). Each has different schema and coverage.

Data freshness & granularity

Google Maps updates POI rapidly for high-traffic locales via user contributions and data partners. Freshness varies for smaller markets. OSM can be very fresh in active regions but lacks standardized attributes (phone/website completeness varies).

Licensing & compliance

Google’s Terms of Service strictly control caching and bulk storage. You can store limited Place IDs and short-term caches, but building a commercial database of Places for resale is usually prohibited. Waze’s POI data is similarly guarded and primarily accessible via commercial partnerships.

Cost & API limits

Google’s Places endpoints are among the more expensive per-1000-requests APIs. Expect costs to scale quickly for high-volume enrichment. OSM + Overpass is free, but rate-limited and not SLA-backed; commercial POI vendors charge per-transaction or subscription.

Scraping & alternatives — practical advice

• For product features like address autocompletion and verified phone numbers, use Google Places when budget and licensing allow.
• If cost or licensing is restrictive, combine OSM for canonical place geometry + a commercial POI provider for business attributes. Keep the canonical source decoupled.
• Avoid scraping mobile app UI or Google search results for POIs — detection and legal risk are high.

2) Routing & directions

Available endpoints

• Google Maps Directions API: route planning (driving, walking, transit, bicycling), traffic-aware durations, waypoints, toll and fare estimates in some regions.
• Waze: Waze focuses on in-app routing for users. There is no widely available public Directions API like Google Maps for general developers; enterprise routing comes via partnerships.
• Alternatives: OSRM, GraphHopper, Valhalla (open-source), HERE Routing, TomTom Routing — these offer self-hostable or commercial routing with configurable profiles.

Data freshness & granularity

Google combines historical and live traffic to produce ETA. For typical urban scenarios, ETA adjustments reflect traffic predictions minutes-to-hours ahead. Open-source routing engines provide deterministic routes but need an external traffic overlay for live ETA.

Licensing & compliance

Google allows using Directions API results in your app/UI according to its terms but forbids creating a standalone map/navigation competitor. Self-hosted routing ( OSM + OSRM/GraphHopper) gives you total control over storage and usage but requires updates and operational overhead.

Cost & API limits

Google’s Directions endpoints are billed per request. For high-volume route planning (thousands-per-minute), cost can exceed hosted alternatives. Self-hosted OSRM/GraphHopper is cost-effective at scale but requires provisioning for routing compute and map updates.

Scraping & alternatives — practical advice

• For delivery ETAs and logistics: use Google Directions for ease of integration and traffic-aware ETAs; if cost is a blocker, host GraphHopper/OSRM and integrate a traffic data stream (see traffic section).
• Batch routing: avoid per-customer synchronous calls to Google. Precompute routes where possible and refresh on triggers (traffic alerts, topological changes).

3) Traffic & live incidents

Available endpoints

• Google Maps: traffic layers via Maps SDK and traffic-influenced ETA in Directions API. Google does not expose a raw incident stream as widely as Waze.
• Waze: the core strength is its crowd-sourced incident reporting. Programs like the Waze Connected Citizens Program (CCP) and commercial partner APIs provide incident feeds (accidents, hazards, police, road closures) with low latency.
• Alternatives: municipal traffic APIs, INRIX (commercial), TomTom Traffic, HERE Traffic.

Data freshness & granularity

Waze incident reports are near-real-time (seconds to a few minutes) and are generally faster at surfacing on-the-ground anomalies than aggregated traffic models. Google uses both aggregated device telemetry and third-party signals to smooth ETA predictions; this can be more stable but slightly slower for sudden events.

Licensing & compliance

Waze’s incident feeds are partner-restricted. Waze provides anonymized, aggregated info to municipalities via CCP under contractual terms that typically forbid resale. Google’s traffic signals accessible via its platform are similarly governed by the Maps Platform Terms.

Cost & API limits

Waze CCP often provides incident data as part of cooperation agreements — cost varies by partnership. Commercial traffic vendors charge for feed volume and geographic coverage. For mission-critical real-time features, budget for a commercial feed or partnership.

Scraping & alternatives — practical advice

• If you need live incident detection for logistics or marketplaces, apply to Waze CCP or license a traffic feed (INRIX/TomTom/HERE) — these are engineered for ingest at scale.
• For low-cost monitoring, consider crowd-sourced signals from social media, webhooked city traffic feeds, and edge-based anomaly detection on user telemetry — but expect higher false-positive rates and integration effort.

4) Navigation telemetry (raw movement / device traces)

Available endpoints

• Google: Navigation SDKs surface route progress and can emit analytics if you run an SDK-integrated app (subject to user consents and Google SDK terms). Google does not expose bulk raw telemetry for third parties without enterprise agreements.
• Waze: raw telemetry is tightly controlled. Waze shares aggregated anonymized traffic insights with partners; raw user traces require explicit agreements and privacy safeguards.

Data freshness & granularity

Telemetry at second-level granularity is valuable for match-to-road and speed models. Practically, only first-party apps (your app’s SDK) or partners get high-resolution telemetry streams. explicit consent and privacy rules in 2025–2026 pushed many providers to limit retention and increase on-device anonymization.

Licensing & compliance

Telemetry access triggers direct privacy (GDPR, CCPA) obligations: explicit consent, purpose limitation, and secured handling. Commercial reuse or resale typically forbidden unless contractually agreed.

Cost & API limits

Telemetry ingestion and storage drive infrastructure costs. If you control the app, collect telemetry under clear user consent and process it into aggregated signals rather than storing raw PII-linked traces.

Scraping & alternatives — practical advice

• To build analytics on navigation data, instrument your own apps or partner with fleets to ingest telemetry under explicit consent and legal frameworks.
• Avoid scraping telemetry from third-party apps — technical barriers and legal risk are high.

Practical decision matrix for common verticals

Below are recommended stacks depending on common product needs.

E‑commerce pricing and delivery ETA

• Need accurate, traffic-aware ETA (dynamic delivery windows): Google Directions + Traffic for fast integration and reliability.
• High-volume batch routing or offline fallback: OSM + OSRM with a commercial traffic feed for ETA adjustments.
• Cost control: precompute delivery zones and ETAs hourly instead of calling per-order synchronously.

Lead generation (business contact data)

• Need verified phone/email and rich attributes: Google Places or Foursquare/Yelp with attention to caching rules.
• Large-scale enrichment: negotiate bulk licensing with commercial POI vendors rather than scraping UIs.

Job boards and commuter search

• Commuting time and serviceability: combine OSM/OSRM for route shapes and Google Directions for real-time ETA where budget allows.
• For “time-to-work” filters at scale, precompute isochrones (here or Mapbox have isochrone APIs; you can compute with open tools) to avoid per-query routing costs.

Marketplaces (on-demand services)

• Live incident detection (reroutes during breakdowns): integrate Waze incident feeds via partnership or use TomTom/HERE for SLAs.
• POI and address validation: Google Places for buyer-facing experiences; store only normalized Place IDs where allowed.

Technical patterns and code snippets

Google Directions (simple fetch example)

GET https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/json?origin=place_id:ChI...&destination=place_id:ChI...&departure_time=now&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Use departure_time=now to get traffic-aware durations. Respect rate limits; implement exponential backoff and server-side caching for identical origin/destination/time windows.

Overpass example — get cafes in a bounding box (OSM)

[out:json][timeout:25];
node[amenity=cafe](50.7,7.1,50.8,7.25);
out body;

Combine Overpass results with your own enrichment pipeline to normalize attributes missing in OSM.

Scaling and operational advice

• Rate-limit strategy: use queuing, per-key sharding, and exponential backoff. For high QPS, purchase enterprise quotas or self-host routing.
• Caching policy: cache non-personal Place IDs and route geometries for short TTLs permitted by provider TOS. For large-scale caches, get a licensing agreement.
• Hybrid architecture: route-critical calls to paid providers and bulk enrichment to open/commercial licensed datasets. This reduces cost while preserving UX.
• Monitoring: instrument accuracy checks (sample live comparisons between providers) to detect drift or outages.

Legal & compliance checklist (must-do)

• Read and comply with the provider’s Terms of Service — especially clauses on caching, storage, and map display.
• Obtain explicit user consent when collecting navigation telemetry; document ROI and retention policy.
• For telemetry or incident feeds, use Data Processing Agreements and DPAs for cross-border transfers.
• When in doubt, consult legal counsel before bulk ingestion or resale.

"Scraping is technically feasible but legally and operationally risky. For production systems, choose official APIs or licensed feeds and treat scraping as a short-term fallback only."

Future outlook & what to watch in 2026

• Expect more granular, subscription-based tiers from major map providers and tighter rules around long-term storage of POI and telemetry.
• Real-time collaborative traffic sharing (federated, privacy-preserving) will grow — governments and platforms will prefer contracted feeds over raw scraping.
• Generative AI will accelerate geodata enrichment (auto-categorization of POIs, address normalization) but will still need authoritative sources for ground truth.

Actionable checklist — which API or dataset fits your use case?

1. If you need high-quality POI attributes and can accept per-request cost: start with Google Places.
2. If you need fast incident detection for routing changes: apply to Waze CCP or license a real-time traffic vendor.
3. If you are cost-sensitive and can operate infrastructure: deploy OSM + OSRM/GraphHopper and integrate a traffic overlay.
4. Never rely on scraping for long-term production. Use scraping only for short-term discovery and always check licensing before storing results.

Closing — practical next steps

If you’re evaluating providers: run a 2–4 week proof-of-concept where you measure these KPIs — data freshness (median update latency), ETA accuracy (mean absolute error), per-request cost, and legal constraints on storage. Use sampled A/B tests against historical delivery or commute data to quantify operational impact.

Need help designing the POC or choosing the right hybrid architecture for routing, traffic, and POI at scale? Contact a specialist or run a vendor trial with controlled traffic to compare real-world cost and quality.

Related Reading

• Serverless vs Dedicated Crawlers: Cost and Performance Playbook (2026)
• Privacy-First AI Tools: Practical Patterns for Consent and On-Device Processing (2026)
• Cloud-Native Observability: Patterns for High-Volume APIs and Monitoring (2026)
• Thermal Innerwear Under a Saree: The Ultimate Winter Wedding Layering Guide
• Layering for Chilly Coastal Evenings: Dresses, Wraps, and Portable Warmers
• Acupuncture, Calm, and Cultural Tension: Alternative Therapies for Stress Around Political Disputes
• How Lower-Production Authenticity Impacts Landing Pages for Domains and Hosting Offers
• Budget-Friendly Meal Plans When Grains and Oils Spike

Call to action

Download our 2026 Geodata Decision Checklist and vendor comparison template, or get a free architecture review for your routing and traffic ingestion pipeline — make your next integration cost-efficient, legal, and resilient.