Three Free APIs to Lookup Address and Location
Today, many websites obtain the address and location information of their visitors for various purposes. Address and location data provide many conveniences for businesses to analyze visitors. There are many methods of obtaining address and location data from visitors.
Geolocation APIs are the most popular method by businesses and developers to obtain address and location information from visitors.Geolocation API are responsible for providing geolocation information corresponding to the IP address. They obtain location data by performing a search based on the user's IP address from a large database containing geographic location information.
With address and location information, businesses can increase visitor satisfaction. One of the most popular examples of this is that the most popular e-commerce applications today access visitor's location information as soon as the visitors enter the application and replace the official language of the application with the official language of the user's location.
Another popular example is currency converters. They also provide currency support during purchases in order to appeal to worldwide visitors on e-commerce websites. Currencies are updated with the official currencies of the visitors' locations in order to keep the visitors happy.
There are many reasons why businesses want to obtain the address and location information of their visitors. There are many geolocation APIs available today that can meet these needs. In this article, we will list the three most popular geolocation APIs that are free.
Best Three Free Geolocation APIs
Ipstack offers today's most preferred geolocation API by businesses and developers. Thanks to its strong infrastructure and flexible structure, Ipstack API can be easily integrated into almost any programming language.
With the geolocation API it provides, Ipstack provides its customers with the geographical location data corresponding to the IP address in a very detailed way. It provides a lot of information about the geographical location corresponding to the IP address , such as the capital, currency, and national flag photo. The geolocation information of Ipstack API is as follows.
{
"ip": "18.194.155.22",
"type": "ipv4",
"continent_code": "EU",
"continent_name": "Europe",
"country_code": "DE",
"country_name": "Germany",
"region_code": "HE",
"region_name": "Hesse",
"city": "Frankfurt am Main",
"zip": "60311",
"latitude": 50.11090087890625,
"longitude": 8.682100296020508,
"location": {
"geoname_id": 2925533,
"capital": "Berlin",
"languages": [
{
"code": "de",
"name": "German",
"native": "Deutsch"
}
],
"country_flag": "https://assets.ipstack.com/flags/de.svg",
"country_flag_emoji": "\ud83c\udde9\ud83c\uddea",
"country_flag_emoji_unicode": "U+1F1E9 U+1F1EA",
"calling_code": "49",
"is_eu": true
},
"time_zone": {
"id": "Europe/Berlin",
"current_time": "2022-12-07T18:33:51+01:00",
"gmt_offset": 3600,
"code": "CET",
"is_daylight_saving": false
},
"currency": {
"code": "EUR",
"name": "Euro",
"plural": "euros",
"symbol": "\u20ac",
"symbol_native":"\u20ac"
},
"connection": {
"asn": 16509,
"isp": "amazon.com Inc"
},
"security": {
"is_proxy": false,
"proxy_type": null,
"is_crawler":false,
"crawler_name": null,
"crawler_type": null,
"is_tor": false,
"threat_level": "low",
"threat_types": null
}
}
Ipstack API offers its customers a total of five packages, including the free package. Within the scope of the free package, you can make 100 requests per month. You can find the free package and other flexible packages here.
Ipapi is a geolocation API that is actively used by more than 30,000 businesses today. Big brands like Obey, Allianz and Wix.com prefer Ipapi.
Ipapi returns within seconds, detailing the location data corresponding to a desired IP address. Its powerful technological infrastructure can provide geolocation data in both JSON and XML format. In this way, it is developer friendly and can be easily integrated into projects. Here is an example of the detailed geolocation data provided by Ipapi.
{
"ip": "18.194.155.22",
"hostname": "ec2-18-194-155-22.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com",
"type": "ipv4",
"continent_code": "EU",
"continent_name": "Europe",
"country_code": "DE",
"country_name": "Germany",
"region_code": "HE",
"region_name": "Hesse",
"city": "Frankfurt am Main",
"zip": "60311",
"latitude": 50.11090087890625,
"longitude": 8.682100296020508,
"location": {
"geoname_id": 2925533,
"capital": "Berlin",
"languages": [
{
"code": "de",
"name": "German",
"native": "Deutsch"
}
],
"country_flag": "https://assets.ipstack.com/flags/de.svg",
"country_flag_emoji": "\ud83c\udde9\ud83c\uddea",
"country_flag_emoji_unicode": "U+1F1E9 U+1F1EA",
"calling_code": "49",
"is_eu": true
},
"time_zone": {
"id": "Europe/Berlin",
"current_time": "2022-12-07T18:43:01+01:00",
"gmt_offset": 3600,
"code": "CET",
"is_daylight_saving": false
},
"currency": {
"code": "EUR",
"name": "Euro",
"plural": "euros",
"symbol": "\u20ac",
"symbol_native": "\u20ac"
},
"connection": {
"asn": 16509,
"isp": "amazon.com Inc"
},
"security": {
"is_proxy": false,
"proxy_type": null,
"is_crawler": false,
"crawler_name": null,
"crawler_type": null,
"is_tor": false,
"threat_level": "low",
"threat_types": null
}
}
You can find other affordable packages of Ipapi, including the free package option for up to 1,000 requests, here.
Finally, the positionstack API provides the free geolocation API that is frequently preferred today. It serves with data on a fairly large and full database side. The database of Positionstack API contains information about more than 2 billion locations around the world.
Some of the services that the Positionstack API provides are:
- Forward Geocoding
- Reverse Geocoding
- Batch Requests
- Embeddable Maps
- JSON, XML & GeoJSON
- Multiple Languages
Positionstack API's geolocation data corresponding to '1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC' is as follows.
{
"data": [
{
"latitude": 38.897675,
"longitude": -77.036547,
"type": "address",
"name": "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW",
"number": "1600",
"postal_code": "20500",
"street": "Pennsylvania Avenue NW",
"confidence": 1,
"region": "District of Columbia",
"region_code": "DC",
"county": "District of Columbia",
"locality": "Washington",
"administrative_area": null,
"neighbourhood": "White House Grounds",
"country": "United States",
"country_code": "USA",
"continent": "North America",
"label": "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, USA",
"bbox_module": [
],
"country_module": {
"latitude": 39.44325637817383,
"longitude": -98.95733642578125,
"common_name": "United States",
"official_name": "United States of America",
"capital": "Washington D.C.",
"flag": "\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8",
"area": 9372610,
"landlocked": false,
"independent": true,
"global": {
"alpha2": "US",
"alpha3": "USA",
"numeric_code": "840",
"region": "Americas",
"subregion": "Northern America",
"region_code": "019",
"subregion_code": "021",
"world_region": "AMER",
"continent_name": "North America",
"continent_code": "NA"
},
"dial": {
"calling_code": "1",
"national_prefix": "1",
"international_prefix": "011"
},
"currencies": [
{
"symbol": "$",
"code": "USD",
"name":"US Dollar",
"numeric": 840,
"minor_unit": 2
}
],
"languages": {
"eng": "English"
}
},
"sun_module": {
"rise": {
"time": 1670415202,
"astronomical": 1670409493,
"civil": 1670413426,
"nautical": 1670411431
},
"set": {
"time": 1670449559,
"astronomical": 1670455268,
"civil": 1670451334,
"nautical": 1670453330
},
"transit": 1670432380
},
"timezone_module": {
"name": "America\/New_York",
"offset_sec": -18000,
"offset_string": "-05:00"
}
}
]
}
Positionstack API offers a free package with a limit of 25,000 requests without any credit card required. You can find the free package and other great content packages here.
Conclusion
With geolocation APIs, it is possible to quickly access the address and location information of your visitors. If you want to use the free geolocation web API in your businesses, take a look at the geolocation APIs we have listed in this article.