Geocoding · head-to-head
Nominatim vs Queimadas INPE
Nominatim provides worldwide forward and reverse geocoding built entirely on OpenStreetMap data, needing no API key — only a descriptive User-Agent or Referer header identifying the calling application (the policy states a stock HTTP-library User-Agent will not do). The public instance at nominatim.openstreetmap.org mainly exists to power the search bar on openstreetmap.org and runs on donated servers with very limited capacity: its usage policy caps requests at an absolute maximum of 1 per second, forbids autocomplete-style querying outright, and requires results to be cached on the caller's side. Bulk geocoding is restricted rather than banned — a smaller one-time task is permissible on a single thread and a single machine, with distributed scripts disallowed and anything running longer than a day capped at 4 requests per minute. The policy points larger users first at commercial third-party providers, and the largest at running their own Nominatim instance.
Queimadas is Brazil's national fire-hotspot monitoring program run by INPE (National Institute for Space Research), publishing daily, monthly, and annual satellite-detected fire-focus data plus fire-risk meteorology layers as open downloads rather than a query API. Files are served as CSV, KML, and shapefile/GeoTIFF layers from INPE's data server with open CORS headers, free and keyless.
| Nominatim | Queimadas INPE | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, XML, GeoJSON | CSV, KML, Shapefile, GeoTIFF |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
Queimadas INPE supports 4 response formats, while Nominatim offers fewer — pick Queimadas INPE for more integration flexibility.