Migrating from Google Places
Places Autocomplete suggests places of every kind worldwide, and its details give an address as a list of typed components. Zapex suggests UK addresses only, from Royal Mail’s PAF, and its lookup gives the address as Royal Mail writes it, with its UPRN.
Calls
| Google Places | Zapex | |
|---|---|---|
POST /v1/places:autocomplete (input, includedRegionCodes: ["gb"]) | GET /v1/addresses?q= | No session token: a suggestion is free, and its lookup is charged. |
GET /v1/places/{placeId} (fields: addressComponents, formattedAddress, location) | GET /v1/addresses/{uprn} | The suggestion’s `uprn` is its ID, as `placeId` is. |
Geocoding API: GET /maps/api/geocode/json?address= | GET /v1/geocode/forward?q= | With a `confidence` and how each part matched. |
Geocoding API: GET /maps/api/geocode/json?latlng= | GET /v1/geocode/reverse?lat=&lng= | |
Places Nearby Search (includedTypes: train_station, bus_stop, school) | GET /v1/places?categories=rail_station,bus_stop,school |
Fields, one by one
| Google Places | Zapex | |
|---|---|---|
placePrediction.placeId | suggestions[].uprn | |
placePrediction.text.text | suggestions[].street_address, post_town, postcode | Join them for one line: `1 East Burrows Road, SWANSEA, SA1 1RE`. |
structuredFormat.mainText | suggestions[].street_address | |
structuredFormat.secondaryText | suggestions[].post_town and postcode | |
formattedAddress | lines.line_1, line_2, line_3, post_town, postcode | As Royal Mail writes it, which is what a delivery needs. |
addressComponents[street_number] | components.building_number | |
addressComponents[premise], [subpremise] | components.building_name, sub_building_name | |
addressComponents[route] | components.thoroughfare_and_descriptor | |
addressComponents[locality], [sublocality] | components.dependent_locality, double_dependent_locality | |
addressComponents[postal_town] | post_town | |
addressComponents[postal_code] | postcode | |
addressComponents[administrative_area_level_2] | geography.county or geography.local_authority | By ONS code and name, as statistics are published by. |
addressComponents[country] (short) | country | ISO 3166-1: `GB`. |
location.latitude, location.longitude | location.lat, location.lng | |
(none) | uprn, udprn | The UK’s identifiers of the property and the delivery point. |
What to watch for
- Google suggests businesses and landmarks too. Zapex suggests addresses: an organisation’s address is found by its name (`components.organisation_name`).
- Google’s terms tie its results to a Google map. Zapex’s results may be stored and shown on any map.
- Restrict a publishable key to your origins, as you would a browser key of Google’s.
Of Google Places’s documentation as of October 2026. Check it against the calls your integration makes, and tell us of anything that differs.