Google Maps stopped being cheap-by-default in 2025. The universal $200 monthly credit that quietly covered most small sites is gone, replaced by a per-product free cap: Dynamic Maps now gives you 10,000 map loads a month, and every load after that costs $7 per 1,000. A site that shows a map on 50,000 page views a month went from free to roughly $280 a month without changing a line of code. OpenStreetMap is the same map data the rest of the industry already builds on, and the data itself costs nothing.

What works the same

Everything most sites actually use: a pannable base map, markers, popups, polygons, clustering, geocoding and routing. Swap the Maps JavaScript API for MapLibre GL JS or Leaflet and the mental model barely changes — you still create a map, add a layer, drop markers, bind events. OSM coverage is worldwide, and in much of Europe its street and footpath detail is better than Google’s, because local mappers maintain it.

What you give up

Three things, and they matter. There is no Street View equivalent. There is no live traffic, so no traffic-aware ETAs. And there is no Places database, so you lose business listings, opening hours, reviews and photos — if your product leans on those, this is not a swap, it is a rewrite. One more practical limit: you may not point a production site at OSM’s public tile servers. Their tile usage policy forbids it. You either use a tile host or serve your own.

The math

Google, at 50,000 map loads a month: 10,000 free, 40,000 billable, $7 per 1,000 — about $280 a month, or roughly $3,400 a year. If you outgrow pay-as-you-go the plans start at $100 a month for 50,000 events. OpenStreetMap data is free under the ODbL licence with no per-load metering at all. Your remaining cost is tile hosting: a provider such as MapTiler, Geoapify, Stadia Maps or Protomaps, or your own server running OpenMapTiles. That line item is real, so price it before you commit rather than assuming zero.

Migration — time & effort

A simple map is an afternoon: install MapLibre GL JS, point it at a tile URL, move your markers across, and add the attribution the licence requires. Budget longer if you also use geocoding or directions, because those are separate services you now choose separately — Nominatim or a commercial geocoder, and OSRM, Valhalla or GraphHopper for routes. Anything built around Places takes the longest, since no OSM-based service reproduces it one-for-one.