BizData API - An Open Alternative to Google Places
The BizData API is a a new business search API built on OpenStreetMap data. Like the Google Places API, it allows developers to search for nearby restaurants, bars, hotels and other businesses. Unlike Google Places, however, BizData is completely free, requires no API key and no billing account.
A typical BizData API request can return names, addresses, phone numbers, websites, coordinates and opening hours for nearby businesses.
Because the API is intentionally much simpler than Google Places it does not include reviews, photos, ratings and popularity data. Data quality also depends entirely on OpenStreetMap coverage. However, for lightweight mapping projects and prototypes the simplicity of BizData is very appealing. There is no Google Cloud setup, quota management or authentication to deal with.
To test the API I built a small Open Bars Map using:
OpenFreeMap tiles,
and BizData as the backend.
My Open Bars map displays nearby bars. It colors markers according to whether bars are currently open or closed using OSM opening hours data retrieved using the BizData API.
Building the map revealed some of the strengths and weaknesses of the API. Because BizData exposes raw OpenStreetMap opening_hours values, the application itself has to interpret schedules such as:
Mo-Sa 16:00-02:00; Su "by appointment"
That flexibility is powerful, but much harder to work with than Google’s normalized “Open Now” status.
The most interesting discovery came while implementing click-to-search map interaction. Although the documentation says the API accepts a city or address as the location parameter, it also appears to accept coordinates directly:
location=40.7128,-74.0060
The API successfully reverse-geocodes the coordinates internally and returns nearby businesses. This undocumented feature makes BizData very useful for interactive maps because users can simply click anywhere on the map to load nearby businesses.
One area where BizData may actually have an advantage over Google Places is its integration with AI tools. The API includes built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) support, allowing AI assistants and coding agents to query business data directly without additional wrappers or infrastructure. That makes it remarkably easy to connect location search to tools such as Claude, Cursor or AI-powered development environments. In contrast, integrating Google Places with AI workflows usually involves API keys, billing configuration and custom middleware.
BizData is unlikely to replace Google Places in established, large-scale applications. It does lack some of the richness, consistency and advanced features of Google’s proprietary dataset. But as a lightweight, open and free business search layer built on OpenStreetMap, it is a compelling alternative for those that simply need reliable business search without the cost and complexity of the Google Maps platform.
Via: weeklyOSM
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