# geolith vs Pelias

> Pelias is a modular open-source geocoder built on Elasticsearch; its maintainers also sell it hosted as Geocode Earth, from $100 a month for 150,000 requests (read 22 Oct 2026). geolith returns a similar GeoJSON response shape but runs from one static .glx file with no cluster. On the same India data (20 Oct 2026, 200 queries per set) geolith’s first result was right for 95.0% of OSM places against Pelias’s 77.0%, and 82.5% of autocomplete queries against 32.5%.

## Side by side

| | geolith | Pelias |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Data | OpenStreetMap + Overture Maps | OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, Who’s On First, and more (by import) |
| Hosted pricing | Free 100,000 requests/month; Starter $19 (1M); Growth $99 (7.5M); Scale $299 (25M) | Open source; hosted as Geocode Earth: Lite $100/month (150,000), Basic $200 (400,000), Advanced $500 (2 million) |
| Storing results | Allowed on every plan, no extra fee | Geocode Earth: store results as long as you need |
| Autocomplete | /v1/autocomplete, same price as any request | Yes |
| Self-hosting | One static .glx file, no database | Elasticsearch cluster plus importers and services |
| India top-1: OSM places | 95.0% | 77.0% |
| India top-1: OSM addresses | 95.0% | 61.5% |
| India top-1: OSM POIs | 84.5% | 61.0% |
| India top-1: Overture POIs | 93.0% | 7.0% |
| India top-1: Autocomplete | 82.5% | 32.5% |
| India top-1: Near a point | 96.0% | 39.0% |
| India top-1: Reverse | 99.5% | 98.0% |
| Feature probes passed | 24 of 25 | 16 of 25 |

Vendor pricing and policy read from their public pages on 2026-10-22.

## What is Pelias?

Pelias is a modular open-source geocoder built on Elasticsearch, with importers for OpenStreetMap, OpenAddresses, Who’s On First and other sources.

## Where Pelias is strong

Pelias is flexible: you choose importers and data sources, and its API design is widely known. Teams with Elasticsearch experience can run it well.

## Where geolith differs

Running Pelias means running Elasticsearch and several services and re-importing data on update. geolith replaces all of that with one file and one small server, or no server at all on geolith cloud.

## Questions

### Do I need to rewrite my Pelias client code?

Often only lightly: geolith answers /v1/search, /v1/autocomplete, /v1/reverse and /v1/place with GeoJSON features and similar property names. Check the API docs for the exact fields.

### Which is more accurate?

In our India run geolith was ahead of Pelias on 7 of 7 sets, for example 95.0% vs 61.5% on OSM addresses.

## Guides

- https://geolith.app/guides/how-to-build-a-geocoder

## Sources

1. [geolith search benchmarks: engines](https://docs.geolith.app/search/benchmarks/engines), geolith (read 2026-10-22)

Get a free API key (100,000 requests a month): https://console.geolith.app/signup