language and region ride along on the geocoding, places and routing calls, so the same query can be localised without changing the call shape — worth knowing when the answer will be read by someone in another country. The overlap to understand before you pick is in discovery: places_search_text, places_nearby and nearby_find all hand back things near a point, but they differ in what they will accept — a free-text query, a location with a radius, or an origin that may be an address. geolocation_estimate and ip_geolocate are the outliers, answering where is this client rather than where is this place, and ip_geolocate can chain the reverse geocode onto its own result.
A Google Maps platform client that keeps geocoding, Places, Routes, elevation, time zones, roads and geolocation as separate tools behind a single API key.
- Address to coordinates and back: geocode_search turns an address, place name or landmark into latitude and longitude with region biasing and a language, and geocode_reverse turns a lat and lng into a readable address with its components broken out.
- Place discovery shaped by what you already know: places_search_text takes a natural-language query with included_types and excluded_types, min_rating, price_levels, open_now, location_bias and rank_preference; places_nearby works outward from a location and radius_meters; nearby_find takes an origin given as coordinates or an address and returns cities, towns or points of interest sorted by distance.
- Detail on a specific place: places_details returns the fields you name for a place_id, places_photos returns signed photo URLs sized by max_width and max_height, and places_autocomplete returns suggestions for a partial input under a session_token.
- Routing and distance: routes_compute returns routes with real-time traffic, toll information and alternatives across driving, walking, cycling and transit, honouring waypoints and the avoid_tolls, avoid_highways and avoid_ferries switches; routes_matrix computes the matrix between lists of origins and destinations.
- Terrain and local time: elevation_get returns elevation for named locations or sampled along a path, and timezone_get returns the time zone for a lat and lng at a given timestamp.
- Locating something that has no address: geolocation_estimate estimates a position from wifi_access_points and cell_towers, ip_geolocate estimates one from an IP with an accuracy radius and an optional reverse geocode, and roads_nearest snaps points to the nearest roads.
A Google Maps API key, supplied as GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY; geolocation_estimate and ip_geolocate reach Google's Geolocation API specifically.
One command plus a key — npx google-maps-mcp-server, then supply credentials