Question about the different supported geocoding providers

[ovizii]

I've read the docs so far: https://github.com/tess1o/geopulse but am still wondering if someone could share more info about the “best” combination.

I'm the sole user of my geopulse instance, I rarely travel so most of the time its just work, shopping and walking the dog. I don't need geopulse to reflect my location and travels in real-time, so I have no issue with rate limited providers.

What exactly is the difference between the 4 providers? Is it a quality issue? If so, can you rate them in order?

I'm not worried about privacy at the moment so that is not the most important criteria.

Also, I saw you can easily self-host a local photon instance, I had it up and running when I was testing dawarich, and I am wondering if there is any point in doing so except for privacy reasons?

[tess1o]

Hello,

Just use default Nomatim, no extra configuration is needed from your side. It's enabled by default and for me works fine.

GeoPulse will fetch reverse geocoding information first time (if you Import data from other source) and then when you go to a new place which is not yet available in our DB. If you visit the same places it won't send any requests to the provider and will use the data we already have. So it's quite good from performance perspective.

Or you can actually try Nomatim and Photon (public or selfhosted instance) and compare results:

1. Enable Nomatim (enabled by default)
2. Enable Photon
3. Go to /app/geocoding-management and verify what results you have.
4. Click on "Reconcile All" or select individual rows and use different provider.
5. Check which one gives you better results.

Probably this is the only way to figure out the best option for you. If you don't like particular results you can update the display name for them individually on the same "Reverse Geocoding Management" page.

Google Maps and Mapbox are other options but they require API Keys (free tier is available). I'd consider them only if you're not satisfied with free options.

Regarding public or selfhosted options (like for Nomatim and Photon) - probably it's a question or privacy and preference. You own your provider, you can maintain it, you don't care if public one dies some day.

Thanks.

[ovizii]

I've done a handful of tests with reconciling between nominatim and photon and it's hit-and-miss. Each recognizes about 50% of the visited places and if they don't, they just display the street address. If I were to manually fix this, I'd select all street addresses and reconcile them, and I'd probably get 50% of them to actually display a business name instead of a street address.

I wanted to give mapbox a quick test and manually tried reconciling a handful of points but am getting this error. Any ideas or shall I open a separate issue?

geopulse-backend  | 2025-10-29 17:25:31,556 ERROR [org.git.tes.geo.geo.ser.MapboxGeocodingService] (vert.x-eventloop-thread-1) Mapbox API call
 failed for coordinates: lon=9.3, lat=49.7: org.jboss.resteasy.reactive.ClientWebApplicationException: Received: 'Forbidden, stat
us code 403' when invoking REST Client method: 'org.github.tess1o.geopulse.geocoding.client.MapboxRestClient#reverseGeocode'

 2025-10-29 17:25:39,053 WARN  [org.git.tes.geo.geo.ser.ReverseGeocodingManagementService] (executor-thread-6) Failed to reconcile geoc   │
│   oding result 211: Reconciliation failed: org.github.tess1o.geopulse.geocoding.service.MapboxGeocodingService#reverseGeocode circuit br   │
│   eaker is open                                                                                                                            

[ovizii]

Testing geopulse 1.2.1

Still seeing an issue here:

• Geocoding Display Names: Fixed an issue where the display names for locations from Google Maps and Mapbox were not being fetched or formatted correctly.

Sample coordinates, where I once stopped: Coordinates:49.721184, 9.230810
There are two places at this location, a petrol station and a car dealership. Nominatim seems to pick the petrol station, photon the car dealership and mapbox just says "unknown location" as the display name.

Improvement suggestion:
Could we possibly pick a place shown on the map when editing a place on the reverse geocoding management page?

[tess1o]

My bad, took geocoding response from mapbox, not reverse geocoding.
For your coordinates it returns a couple of place_name entities. I just take the first one in the list because I don't really know how else decide.

I will fix this in next release, effectively Mapbox is broken as of 1.2.1 release. Sorry.

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "query": [9.23081, 49.721184],
  "features": [
    {
      "id": "address.7365771982435620",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "address"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {
        "accuracy": "rooftop",
        "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieGFkcjo2MWVkYmQ2ZC1kYjc4LTQ2YTEtOWE2My05N2JlYzkyOTUyMWU"
      },
      "text": "Miltenberger Straße",
      "place_name": "Miltenberger Straße 60, 63920 Großheubach, Germany",
      "center": [9.23077, 49.721342],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [9.23077, 49.721342]
      },
      "address": "60",
      "context": [
        {
          "id": "postcode.7365771982435620",
          "text": "63920"
        },
        {
          "id": "place.28076090",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBYXhvT2c",
          "wikidata": "Q502986",
          "text": "Großheubach"
        },
        {
          "id": "district.1254970",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpFeVk2",
          "wikidata": "Q10472",
          "text": "Kreis Miltenberg"
        },
        {
          "id": "region.123962",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBZVE2",
          "wikidata": "Q980",
          "short_code": "DE-BY",
          "text": "Bavaria"
        },
        {
          "id": "country.8762",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
          "wikidata": "Q183",
          "short_code": "de",
          "text": "Germany"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "postcode.7365771982435620",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "postcode"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {

      },
      "text": "63920",
      "place_name": "63920, Großheubach, Bavaria, Germany",
      "center": [9.228529, 49.722704],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [9.228529, 49.722704]
      },
      "context": [
        {
          "id": "place.28076090",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBYXhvT2c",
          "wikidata": "Q502986",
          "text": "Großheubach"
        },
        {
          "id": "district.1254970",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpFeVk2",
          "wikidata": "Q10472",
          "text": "Kreis Miltenberg"
        },
        {
          "id": "region.123962",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBZVE2",
          "wikidata": "Q980",
          "short_code": "DE-BY",
          "text": "Bavaria"
        },
        {
          "id": "country.8762",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
          "wikidata": "Q183",
          "short_code": "de",
          "text": "Germany"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "place.28076090",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "place"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {
        "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBYXhvT2c",
        "wikidata": "Q502986"
      },
      "text": "Großheubach",
      "place_name": "Großheubach, Kreis Miltenberg, Bavaria, Germany",
      "bbox": [9.179666, 49.70861, 9.274065, 49.760611],
      "center": [9.221822, 49.72731],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [9.221822, 49.72731]
      },
      "context": [
        {
          "id": "district.1254970",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpFeVk2",
          "wikidata": "Q10472",
          "text": "Kreis Miltenberg"
        },
        {
          "id": "region.123962",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBZVE2",
          "wikidata": "Q980",
          "short_code": "DE-BY",
          "text": "Bavaria"
        },
        {
          "id": "country.8762",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
          "wikidata": "Q183",
          "short_code": "de",
          "text": "Germany"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "district.1254970",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "district"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {
        "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpFeVk2",
        "wikidata": "Q10472"
      },
      "text": "Kreis Miltenberg",
      "place_name": "Kreis Miltenberg, Bavaria, Germany",
      "bbox": [9.033268, 49.5735, 9.479715, 49.938483],
      "center": [9.251376, 49.703422],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [9.251376, 49.703422]
      },
      "context": [
        {
          "id": "region.123962",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBZVE2",
          "wikidata": "Q980",
          "short_code": "DE-BY",
          "text": "Bavaria"
        },
        {
          "id": "country.8762",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
          "wikidata": "Q183",
          "short_code": "de",
          "text": "Germany"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "region.123962",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "region"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {
        "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpBZVE2",
        "wikidata": "Q980",
        "short_code": "DE-BY"
      },
      "text": "Bavaria",
      "place_name": "Bavaria, Germany",
      "bbox": [8.97636, 47.270114, 13.839565, 50.564694],
      "center": [11.575382, 48.137108],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [11.575382, 48.137108]
      },
      "context": [
        {
          "id": "country.8762",
          "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
          "wikidata": "Q183",
          "short_code": "de",
          "text": "Germany"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "country.8762",
      "type": "Feature",
      "place_type": [
        "country"
      ],
      "relevance": 1,
      "properties": {
        "mapbox_id": "dXJuOm1ieHBsYzpJam8",
        "wikidata": "Q183",
        "short_code": "de"
      },
      "text": "Germany",
      "place_name": "Germany",
      "bbox": [5.866315, 47.270114, 15.041797, 55.151245],
      "center": [10.018343, 51.133481],
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Point",
        "coordinates": [10.018343, 51.133481]
      }
    }
  ],
  "attribution": "NOTICE: © 2025 Mapbox and its suppliers. All rights reserved. Use of this data is subject to the Mapbox Terms of Service (https://www.mapbox.com/about/maps/). This response and the information it contains may not be retained."
}

[ovizii]

Don't worry, I am happy it wasn't me messing things up :-)

[tess1o]

This issue with mapbox was fixed couple of releases ago.

[ovizii]

I guess we can be done with this issue, although, looking at the above sample coordinates, photon recognizes a place, mapbox a street address with house number while nominatim doesn't even report a city back for them. Anyway, doesn't seem to stem from geopulse so nothing to be done.