Geo Data - spinningideas/resources GitHub Wiki

Below is information on Geography related tools and datasets to aid efforts to produce solutions that have some form of map or geography related feature set.

NOTE: The data linked to below may be inaccurate, incomplete, or just plain wrong. As always, critically examine the data you are using, look at what organisation produced it and what agenda they may have, and beware that there are disputes over some of the data (particularly country boundaries). Also note that offerings and pricing listed may have changed.

Lists and Curated Resources

3D Visualization Tools

Geo Data Tools (Editing)

Geo Json

Geocoding

Below are resources that specifically deal with geocoding locations.

Free & Open APIs (No Credit Card / Self-Hostable)

  • OpenStreetMap Nominatim - 100% Free (Open source, rate-limited to 1 request/second, requires a descriptive User-Agent and attribution).
  • Photon by Komoot - 100% Free search-as-you-type API powered by OpenStreetMap. Highly scalable and can be self-hosted.
  • US Census Bureau Geocoder - 100% Free. No API key required, but strictly limited to United States addresses and geographies.
  • Open-Meteo Geocoding API - Free for non-commercial use (up to 10,000 requests/day). No API key required.
  • LatLong.net - Free online tool to look up latitude and longitude coordinates of places.

Freemium APIs (Generous Free Tiers)

  • Geocode.maps.co - Free tier provides 1 request/second. Paid plans start at $15/month for higher limits.
  • Positionstack - Free tier allows 25,000 requests/month (personal/non-commercial). Paid plans start at $9.99/month.
  • Geoapify - Free tier provides 3,000 credits/day (typically 1 request = 1 credit). Paid plans start at €49/month.
  • LocationIQ - Free tier provides 5,000 requests/day (limited to 2 requests/second). Paid plans start at $49/month.
  • Radar Geocoding - Free tier provides 100,000 requests/month. Paid plans start at $29/month.
  • Geocod.io - Free tier provides 2,500 lookups/day (US, Canada, and UK only). Paid tiers are pay-as-you-go ($1.00 per 1,000 lookups).
  • OpenCage Geocoding - Free tier provides 2,500 requests/day (no credit card required). Paid plans start at $25/month.

Premium & Commercial APIs

  • Google Maps Platform Geocoding - Provides a $200 monthly free credit (approx. 40,000 requests/month). Costs $5.00 per 1,000 requests thereafter.
  • Mapbox Geocoding API - Free tier provides 100,000 temporary requests/month. Costs $0.75 per 1,000 requests thereafter. Permanent storage requires a paid/enterprise plan.
  • TomTom Geocoding API - Free tier provides 2,500 requests/day. Pay-as-you-go starts at $0.50 per 1,000 requests.
  • HERE Geocoding API - Free tier provides 30,000 transactions/month. Pay-as-you-go starts at $1.00 per 1,000 transactions.
  • ArcGIS World Geocoding Service - Free tier provides 20,000 requests/month (temporary/non-stored). Costs $0.25 per 1,000 geocodes thereafter.

Data Sets

Global Data Sources

Below are 65+ external providers and APIs across geopolitics, finance, energy, climate, aviation, cyber, military, infrastructure, and news intelligence - surfaced through 500+ curated feeds. Full catalog at https://www.worldmonitor.app/docs/data-sources

Energy & Commodities

Finance & Economics

Geopolitics & Conflict

Environment & Disasters

Infrastructure & Cyber

Aviation

Intelligence Feeds

Weather Feeds

Cities/Countries Open Source

Cities/Countries Commercial

Continents

Countries

See https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/1047/seeking-full-list-of-iso-alpha-2-and-iso-alpha-3-country-codes

States/Provinces

Metro Areas

The OMB defines a Metropolitan Statistical Area as one or more adjacent counties, or county equivalents, that have at least one urban core area of at least 50,000 population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by the commuting tie.

Categories of CBSAs are: Metropolitan Statistical Areas, based on urbanized areas of 50,000 or more

Micropolitan Statistical Areas, based on urban clusters of at least 10,000 population but less than 50,000.

MSA = area with one city >50000 CSBA = core based statistical area

Data

Zip Codes

Global Cities

There are about 100 cities in the world with more than 500k inhabitants:

  • X-Large 2.5M+ (21)
  • Large 1M - 2.5M (32)
  • Medium 500K - 1M (47)
  • Small 50K - 500K (???)

There are more than 4000 cities with more than 100k inhabitants:

Here are maps of these cities

United States Cities/Geographies

Accuracy

Most scenarios in which GeoJSON is useful (i.e. web-related applications) do not require survey-grade precision (eg 7+ digits). Trimming the precision of coordinates can greatly reduce file size, while removing the appearance of fake high precision.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8650/measuring-accuracy-of-latitude-and-longitude/8674#8674

decimal places degrees distance
0 1.0 111 km
1 0.1 11.1 km
2 0.01 1.11 km
3 0.001 111 m
4 0.0001 11.1 m
5 0.00001 1.11 m
6 0.000001 0.111 m
7 0.000001 1.11 cm
8 0.00000001 1.11 mm