How Mapbox's free tier works

Stockist uses a map key that you provide from either Mapbox or Google Maps to power the map imagery and parts of the search in your store locator. To use Mapbox, you'll need to sign up for an account directly with Mapbox to get a map key for your site (instructions here).

Each Mapbox account includes a free tier that's enough for around 10,000 views of your map every month - there's no additional cost for this beyond your regular Stockist plan.

This free tier is enough for the vast majority of sites using Stockist, so there's generally no extra cost to worry about. However, if you think your site might have higher traffic to the map page or are wondering exactly how the free tier is calculated, this page has more details.

Services used

Mapbox lists their pricing here: https://www.mapbox.com/pricing

They offer quite a few services, but Stockist uses only two:

1. Static Tiles API

The map on your website is made up of a grid of images, and each image in the grid is called a 'tile'. As you pan or zoom the map, new tiles are loaded to display the imagery in that area.

This tool has an illustration of the individual tiles that make up a web map, although Mapbox uses larger tiles than this example, so fewer tiles are needed.

The Static Tiles API from Mapbox provides the individual image tiles that make up the map. We've found that an average pageview of the Stockist map uses around 12 tiles, although this could be more or less in your case depending on how large the map section of your site is and how much visitors interact with the map.

Mapbox offers 200,000 tiles free each month. Using our estimate of 12 tiles per pageview, this translates to about 16,666 free map views, so we use 10,000 as a conservative estimate:

After exceeding the free tier of 10,000 map views, this translates to approximately $6 USD per 1,000 additional map views, although this amount can be lower or higher depending on how much visitors interact with the map (more panning and zooming results in more tiles being viewed).

2. Temporary Geocoding API

The Temporary Geocoding API powers the text search and place suggestions. This service translates text like "New York" or "Paris" into a place in the world (GPS coordinates) so that Stockist can find nearby listings on your map.

This service is used when visitors type into the search bar:

If search suggestions are enabled for your map, one request is used for each letter typed in the search box, in order to display matching possibilities
One request is also used when clicking the "Search" button to look up the full search text

Mapbox offers 100,000 requests free per month:

On average, most maps use only a few geocoding requests per pageview, so it's rare to run into an overage here.

Checking your usage

You can check your current Mapbox usage level at any time by logging into the Mapbox dashboard and checking the usage bars on the right-hand side, for example:

You can also see historical usage via the Statistics link at the top of the dashboard:

Usage notifications

If your usage exceeds the free tier in any particular month, Mapbox will send a notification to the email address on file with them. This notice comes from [email protected], so we recommend adding this email to your address book to ensure the notifications are delivered to your inbox.

Reducing your usage

If you find that your usage is approaching the limit of the free tier, there are a few options to reduce usage:

To reduce usage of the Static Tiles API, consider:

Reducing the width and/or height of the map section on your site to reduce the number of tiles loaded (feel free to reach out for assistance)
Using our "Automatic geolocation" feature so that the map starts out focused near the customer, reducing the amount of panning/zooming needed

To reduce usage of the Temporary Geocoding API, consider:

Turning off the "Search suggestions" feature
Using our "Automatic geolocation" feature so that the map starts out focused near the customer, reducing the need to type in a search