To use the Mapzen Search service, you must first obtain a free developer API key from Mapzen. Sign in at https://mapzen.com/developers to create and manage your API keys.
Mapzen Search is a free, shared geocoding service. As such, there are limitations on requests to prevent individual users from degrading the overall system performance.
Go to https://mapzen.com/developers.
Sign in with your GitHub account. If you have not done this before, you need to agree to the terms first.
Create a new key for Mapzen Search, and optionally, give it a name so you can remember the purpose of the project.
Keep the web page open so you can copy the key into the code later.
# Rate Limits
As Mapzen Search is a free, shared service, we have rate limits that restrict the maximum number of requests per second and per day.
Our free API keys allow you a maximum of:
- 3 requests per second
- 30,000 requests per day
If you need more capacity, you can get in touch with [search@mapzen.com](mailto:search@mapzen.com), or set up your own instance of [Pelias](https://github.com/pelias/pelias), which we provide with access to all of the same data we use to power Mapzen Search.
Mapzen Search works over HTTPS in addition to HTTP. We strongly encourage you to use HTTPS for all requests, especially for queries involving potentially sensitive information, like a user's location or search query.
