# Geocoding benchmarks: geolith, Nominatim, Photon, Pelias

> geolith, Nominatim, Photon and Pelias ran in Docker on the same machine with the same India data (20 Oct 2026), 200 queries per set. geolith had the best top-1 on 5 of 7 sets: 95.0 % on OSM addresses, 82.5 % on autocomplete, 93.0 % on Overture POIs. Photon leads on OSM POIs and Nominatim on reverse.

## Accuracy per query set

India, top-1 accuracy (%), 200 queries per set, all four engines in Docker on the same data (20 Oct 2026). Method: https://docs.geolith.app/search/benchmarks/engines

| Set | geolith | Nominatim | Photon | Pelias |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OSM places | 95.0 | 85.0 | 80.5 | 77.0 |
| OSM addresses | 95.0 | 50.5 | 88.5 | 61.5 |
| OSM POIs | 84.5 | 68.5 | 85.5 | 61.0 |
| Overture POIs | 93.0 | 6.0 | 12.5 | 7.0 |
| Autocomplete | 82.5 | n/a | 42.5 | 32.5 |
| Near a point | 96.0 | 44.5 | 52.0 | 39.0 |
| Reverse | 99.5 | 100.0 | 98.5 | 98.0 |

## How a result counts

A result counts when it lies within the gold radius of the gold point. Feature probes (25 single-capability queries): geolith 24, Nominatim 21, Photon 19, Pelias 16.

## The whole world in one file

Planet file (22 Oct 2026): 31.63 GB, 678,043,458 places, built in 5 h 28 min. It answered 21/21 world test queries; the slowest took 110 ms on a warm local server.

## How often the first result matches Google's

On 194 real India queries, geolith's first result was within 1 km of Google's for 113 (58 %). We do not claim geolith is better than Google.

## Full reports

The docs have the conditions, every table and the commands to reproduce the runs.

- Engines: accuracy, feature probes, latency, load and disk (https://docs.geolith.app/search/benchmarks/engines).
- Latency of the .glx file read from local disk (https://docs.geolith.app/search/benchmarks/latency).
- Reading a town without a comma, such as "mg road pune" (https://docs.geolith.app/search/benchmarks/town-reading).

## Sources

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

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