To use the Maps Embed API, you now must register your app project on the Google Cloud Platform Console and get a Google API key which you can add to your app or website.

the free key created 2016 and 2017 do not work anymore even on projects uploaded 2016
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/get-api-key

you have to Enable billing plan for the project an you have to give Google your Card information to pay

but it is very unclear on their website how the pricing are

anyone here has some experience or knowledge about this

regards Svendus

I'm still getting away with the free keys I created before, and haven't given them a credit card, but I'm sure that door will get closed soon. I suspect that if I went over the $200-per-month free allowance, my maps would stop working.

The pricing is murky, but here's the summary:

https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

The definitions are almost impossible to sort out, but I think what we're all using in our skins are Dynamic Maps, so our pages would get 28,000 free loads per month. That's a lot of traffic, but what's not clear is what happens when search bots, including Google's own searchers, hit your site and start calling up maps.

You can set a quota, but perversely, they don't let you set a monthly quota - you can set only a daily quota. So, to ensure you don't ever go over your $200 worth for the month, you'd have to set a daily quota of something like $6.50 per day.

This is a scheme that was obviously designed by a huge committee - it's about 20 times more complicated than it needs to be.

Switching to another map provider isn't easy. Each of them has its own API, which means extensive skin rewriting. And which one to choose? Some of the major sites, like The Weather Channel, have gone to Mapbox, so that one might be worth a look.

The examples were Pano2VR
but it seems that jAlbum Tigerskin with Google maps still are going free ?
the same Pano2VR panorama are not

Edited by: svendus on 22-Oct-2018 09:46

I gave them my credit card, and they send me a bill with $0 every month. You can follow the traffic on their site. However I'm still concerned, because they can change the limit once they want more money, and one day I might end a paid service I never intended to subscribe. So I might add Nokia Maps too, which is using a similar business model, but their usage limit is much more generous. Or perhaps Openmaps... (?)

Today every company seems to change from the free model to some kind of paid construction, and this might be the end of the golden age of internet.

See also this survey: https://nearplace.com/blog/google-maps-api-alternatives/