Plus code API access is changing

[Doug Rinckes]

Hi, if you don't use the plus code API you can stop reading now.

The API allows you to convert between locations and addresses and plus codes. For example, you can convert the latitude and longitude 14.917313,-23.511313 into plus codes including the long code (796RWF8Q+WF), the short code and locality (WF8Q+WF, Praia, Cape Verde) and the best street address that Google has (Ave Machado Santos, Praia, Cape Verde).

The plus codes API uses Google's Geocoding API to get the locality and street name.

Right now, all the requests that the API sends to Google use the same identifier. There's a risk that if someone makes a lot of requests that it could break the API for everyone by exceeding the daily allowance.

We want to change the plus codes API to avoid that risk.

What's going to change?

If you just want to convert between latitude and longitude and the long code, nothing.

If you want to get the short codes, locality and street addresses, you will need to get a Google API key and pass that in your request. When you make a call to the plus codes API, it will use your key to make the request to Google's Geocoding API.

The API keys are free for up to 2,500 requests per day, which is about the number of requests that the plus.codes site sends each day.

When is it going to change?

I'll update the documentation on Github, and next week push a change that will allow you to get keys and test them, and then a week or so later there will be another update that will enforce the requirement.

If you're currently using the plus codes API, it would really help if you let me know how you're using it, so we don't miss anything.

Best regards,

Doug Rinckes, Technical Program Manager, Google Switzerland GmbH; 9G8F+5XM Zürich