GeoNames Commercial Webservices
The GeoNames Commercial Webservices are running on faster servers with more RAM and less load to guarantee fast and reliable response time. The commercial web services have higher uptime and failover to other servers in case of hardware defects or software bugs. By entering in a commercial relation with geonames.org you can be sure the services don't disappear one day without notice.The GeoNames commercial web services are the right choice for you if you need fast, reliable response time and you want to be sure the service keeps on running.
Webservice Documentation
Advantages of the 'Commercial Webservices' over the 'free webservice'
- faster response time thanks to better servers with more RAM and less load
- higher uptime
- software and data tested on free server before being deployed on commercial server
- failover to other server
- access charts
- guarantee that the web services are kept on running
- higher max limits for a couple of parameter like maxRows or startRow
- we know who the users of the commercial services are and can inform them about changes.
- 'dual licence' : you don't have to give credit to geonames if you are using the commercial service. (The free data and services are licenced under the creative commons attribution licence.)
Contact Marc Wick (marc@geonames.org) for further information.
Pricing
GeoName offers two web service types, 'Best Availability' is meant for users who depend on the availability of the service for mission critical applications whereas 'Best Price' is for users who don't depend so much on availablity.For higher availability we recommend to include failover handling on the client side. This means that the client will access one of our failover datacenters if the main domain is unreachable. This way availability of nearly 100% is achievable. (This option is only available for 'Best Availability' Plan.)
You can anytime upgrade to a higher plan. Your credits will be converted to the higher plan, pro rata temporis of the remaining months.
A) Best Availability (99.9% availability, near 100% with client failover)
| Total Credits | max credits/hour | max credits/day | max credits/week | price in Euro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.000.000 | 2.000 | 20.000 | 100.000 | 250 € | |
| 5.000.000 | 10.000 | 100.000 | 500.000 | 500 € |
B) Best Price (99% availability)
| Total Credits | max credits/hour | max credits/day | max credits/week | price in Euro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100.000 | 250 | 2.000 | 10.000 | 40 € | |
| 1.000.000 | 1.000 | 10.000 | 50.000 | 80 € | |
| 5.000.000 | 10.000 | 100.000 | 500.000 | 120 € |
| Credits needed for a single web service call | |
|---|---|
| postalCodeSearch | 1 credit per request |
| findNearbyPostalCodes | 2 credits per request, 3 credits for more than 500 records |
| search | 1 credit per request |
| findNearbyWikipedia | 2 credits per request |
| wikipediaSearch | 1 credit per request |
| findNearestAddress | 1 credit per request |
| gtopo30 | 0,1 credit per request |
| srtm3 | 0,2 credit per request |
| findNearByWeatherJSON | 2 credits per request |
| findNearbyPlaceName | 4 credits per request |
| rssToGeoRSS | 4 per item in feed (for geocoding) 0 if lat/lng are already included in feed |
| cities | 4 credits per request |
| fullnearby | 4 credits per request |
Validity
The credits are valid for the period of one year. If the credits are exceeded within a timeframe further requests will automatically be forwarded to the free server. This means your application will still work, even if you exceed your credit limits, but it will use the free server which does not have the same performance and quality of service.Terms of Service
The uptime is measured on a monthly basis and does not include the public internet network availability. If the service does not achieve the above specified uptime in a month the User has the choice to get the money back for the month in question and the remaining months or the Provider will add a free month to the period of the services.Authentication and Authorization
Webservice requests are authenticated and authorized with a username passed as parameter with each request. Optional authentication measures are a token parameter serving as web service 'password' or a range of allowed IP addresses.For users who are directly accessing the commercial web services from javascript additional restriction options are available. With the specification of an allowed referrer the service will refuse being accessed from other web sites and it is also possible to limit the number of credits used per IP address.
Monitoring
Users of the commercial web services can monitor the usage of credits on their GeoNames account page. A chart on the account page shows the daily usage of credits.
