Geocodio vs Smarty Comparison

Geocodio and Smarty (formerly SmartyStreets) are both online services that provide geocoding services and allow you to turn addresses into coordinates and coordinates into approximate addresses.

This article compares the two services with some commonly-asked questions.

Does Smarty let you permanently store or share data and results? Does Geocodio let you keep data and results?

Smarty has several different APIs, each with different terms of use. For their rooftop geocoding API, Smarty does not allow you to permanently store or share results from their service. From the Smarty US Rooftop API Terms of Use:

3. Restrictions:...Except as permitted as internal business use purposes, Client shall have no right to disclose, reproduce, copy, reverse-engineer, mine, scrape, modify, assign, distribute, sell, rent, lease, market, publish, transfer, share, or sublicense

and

4. Termination and Deletion Obligation: Upon expiration of a subscription or term set forth in a Service Order, Client shall cease use of, delete, destroy, and/or purge from its computer system any Geocoding Content in its possession. Upon request, Client will provide certification of removal, deletion and disposal of Provider's proprietary Content.

Geocodio allows you to permanently store, share, reuse, copy, or otherwise use results from our service without restrictions. Our caveat is that it must be allowed by the underlying data source license, yet we only integrate underlying datasets that are restriction-free. (See more about our sources here.) Here's the exact language from our Terms:

4.5.1. Provided your usage of Geocodio and the way you acquired, uploaded, and use the data is in compliance with all applicable laws (including but not limited to those listed in section 4.4), there are no additional restrictions on how data from Geocodio is used or stored, provided the license for the underlying data permits it. We use best efforts to determine that our underlying data sources permit replication, but you take responsibility for ensuring your usage complies with our sources' licenses. All results are provided with sources and you understand it is your responsibility to use that information as needed.

and

4.5.2 Provided the above is satisfied, data from Geocodio, including addresses and coordinates, may be stored in your database, reproduced, or otherwise reused, manipulated, or resold.

Does Smarty have free geocoding? Does Geocodio have free geocoding?

Smarty offers a 42-day trial with 1,000 free lookups for their geocoding, reverse geocoding, and address verification services. After that, plans start at $45/month for geocoding (1,000 lookups) and $54/month for reverse geocoding (25,000 lookups). These do not include data enrichment.

What is the accuracy of Smarty geocoding? What is the accuracy of Geocodio geocoding?

Smarty's US forward geocoding plus USPS (US Address Verification) results are at the ZIP+4 level, which is roughly equivalent to the block or neighborhood level. Smarty also offers a separate rooftop geocoding product.

Geocodio's geocoding accuracy is mostly at the individual address level. Given a random sample, 70% of results will be the exact rooftop, 20% of the results will be in front of the house on the street, and 10% will be lower accuracy types such as a nearby address, neighborhood, or city-level. All results are returned with an accuracy score and type so you can easily filter out lower-accuracy results.

What are Smarty's data sources? What are Geocodio's data sources?

Smarty uses the US Census Bureau TIGER/Line dataset for geocoding. It is unclear what their data sources are for rooftop data and they state it is their own data. See their page on data sources here.

Geocodio's geocoding engine uses over 1,000 datasets, most of which are official state and city datasets. As a fallback, Geocodio also provides results from TIGER/Line. All results are returned with the underlying data source. See Geocodio's data sources here.

Does Smarty do address verification? Does Geocodio do address verification?

Yes, Smarty does USPS address verification.

Geocodio does provide USPS address verification, yet is not currently CASS certified. Address verification can be done through the zip4 data append. USPS indicators such as ZIP+4, ZIP9, carrier route IDs, and more are returned as well. See more here.

What is Smarty's pricing? What is Geocodio's pricing?

Smarty's pricing is based around monthly plans, each with a set limit of requests per month. Smarty does not have a pay-as-you-go option.

Smarty offers a 42-day trial with 1,000 free lookups for their geocoding, reverse geocoding, and address verification services. US address verification plans start at $17/month for 1,000 lookups and go up to $485/month for 170k lookups. See Smarty pricing here.

Smarty reverse geocoding starts at $54/month for 25,000 lookups, and US rooftop geocoding starts at $45/month for 1,000 lookups. The highest volume they publicly list for that product is 2 million lookups per year for $12,450/year. There is no unlimited plan publicly listed.

Geocodio has two self-service options: pay-as-you-go and Unlimited. With pay-as-you-go, the first 2,500 lookups per day are free, and then $1.00/1,000 after that. You can estimate your costs here. There is a rate limit of 1,000 API calls per minute when using our single request API endpoint.

Does Smarty have an API? Does Geocodio have an API?

Yes, Smarty has an API. You can see the documentation here.

Yes, Geocodio has an API. You can see the documentation here.

Can I geocode a spreadsheet with Smarty? Can I geocode a spreadsheet with Geocodio?

Smarty has an upload tool to process lists of addresses. The tool can process CSV files with up to 500,000 addresses, and it can process Excel files with up to 100,000 addresses. See details here.

Geocoding spreadsheets is one of Geocodio's core features. You can geocode a CSV, TSV, and Excel spreadsheets of addresses or coordinates via file upload or API. Lists must be 1 GB or less and results are provided in a CSV file. You can upload the file or copy/paste. Upload your list here.

You can also process a CSV via API with Geocodio (see documentation here.)

Can I geocode international addresses with Smarty? Can I geocode international addresses with Geocodio?

Smarty supports the US through their own geocoder and has integrated another geocoder for international support. Their international pricing is higher than their US pricing and can be found here.

Geocodio supports the US, Canada, and Mexico. The price is the same for all countries.

This information is complete to the best of our knowledge. We believe competition is a good and necessary thing, and strive to accurately and fairly describe our competitors. See any mistakes? Please email us.