Google Maps

Consumer navigation and local search app, distinct from the paid Google Maps Platform developer API

As of 1 September 2026, Google Maps is free to use. The free consumer navigation, transit and local search app most people mean by Google Maps. Softwr lists it under Maps. Google Maps is made by Google LLC, available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Google Maps

Overview

What Google Maps does

Google Maps provides turn-by-turn driving, walking, cycling and transit navigation, live traffic conditions, local business search with reviews and photos, offline map downloads, and Street View. It integrates with Google Assistant and shares data with Google's wider ecosystem such as Timeline location history where enabled. The distinction worth being precise about is that this consumer app is free with no subscription, while the underlying mapping, geocoding and routing data is also sold separately to developers as Google Maps Platform, a metered API product billed per request with its own pricing and free monthly credit. A person using the Google Maps app pays nothing directly; a business building navigation or store-locator features into its own app or website using the same underlying map data pays Google as an API customer. These are catalogued and priced completely differently and this entry covers only the free consumer app. Buyers of the consumer app are anyone needing navigation or local search, and it is the default or near-default choice on Android given Google's ownership of the platform, with wide iOS use as well. The trade-off is standard for a free Google product: location history and search behaviour feed Google's advertising and personalisation systems unless a user actively limits what is tracked.

What people use it for

Getting turn-by-turn driving or transit directions to a destination
Searching for and comparing nearby restaurants, shops or services with reviews
Downloading an offline map before travelling somewhere with unreliable data coverage
Checking real time traffic conditions before or during a drive

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Google Maps.

Location history (Timeline) is stored to the Google account unless disabled, and many users are unaware of how much of their movement is retained by default.
Local business rankings and prominent ads mix paid placement with organic results, so top results are not purely a relevance ranking.
Offline maps expire after a period and must be manually refreshed, which can catch travellers out if they rely on an old download without checking it.
Public transit data quality varies significantly by city and country, and is considerably weaker or absent in many smaller or lower-income regions.
It is a different product from Google Maps Platform, the paid developer API, and businesses evaluating navigation for their own app need to compare that API's pricing separately rather than assuming free consumer access extends to embedding.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Google Maps

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Google Mapsvs
Google Maps Platform
Google Maps Platform: If you are a developer needing to embed maps, geocoding or routing into your own product rather than using the consumer app

Pricing

What Google Maps costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Unlimited navigation and local search
Offline maps included
No subscription tier for the consumer app

Capabilities

Features

Turn-by-turn navigation
Driving, walking, cycling and transit directions with live traffic
Local search
Business search with reviews, photos, hours and busy-time predictions
Offline maps
Download map areas for navigation without a data connection
Street View
Panoramic street-level imagery for a large share of mapped roads
Timeline location history
Optional personal location history stored to the user's Google account
Live transit and incident reporting
Real time transit schedules and user-submitted traffic incident reports

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Google Maps free?

Yes, the consumer app is free with no subscription for navigation, local search or offline maps.

Is this the same as Google Maps Platform?

No, Google Maps Platform is a separate, metered API product sold to developers embedding map functionality into their own apps and websites, with its own usage-based pricing.

Does Google Maps track my location history?

It can, through the optional Timeline feature, which is on by default in some configurations and can be reviewed or disabled in Google account settings.

Keep looking

Where to go from Google Maps

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Google Maps, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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