AddressBrain vs Google Places Autocomplete
Google Places Autocomplete alternative for UK addresses
Google Places is a brilliant global places index and an awkward fit for UK postal addresses. AddressBrain is the other way round: officially licensed Royal Mail PAF data, modelled the way UK addresses actually exist, returned validated and structured in one request.
Free trial: 30 lookups a day for 30 days. No card required.
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Sub-50ms response times
Free tier, no card required
Where Places breaks on UK addresses
A global schema meets flats, house names and postcodes
Places' address components assume a street number and a route. UK addresses often have neither: Rose Cottage, Water Lane; Flat 3, 12 High Street. Places frequently returns the building with no flats, or a house name with nowhere to put it.
And autocomplete is not validation. Google's own guidance is to run Autocomplete and Address Validation as two separate, separately billed steps. A postcode-first lookup on PAF returns an already-validated address in one.
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Flats and
sub-premises
PAF lists every delivery point, so a postcode covering eight flats returns eight selectable addresses. Places' sub-premise data is inconsistently populated for the UK, which pushes the flat number back onto the shopper.
House names and counties
Building names are a first-class PAF field, not something bolted onto a street line. Counties are treated as the optional detail they are, rather than a required slot in a global schema.
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Validated in one request
AddressBrain returns a real, deliverable Royal Mail address with every lookup. There is no separate validation call to make, and no "that address wasn't quite right" after the shopper has already picked from your list.
Pricing
Two Google SKUs vs one AddressBrain plan.
Google bills Autocomplete at $2.83 per 1,000 requests after 10,000 free a month, Place Details Essentials at $5.00 per 1,000 and Address Validation at $17.00 per 1,000 after 5,000 free (list prices, October 2026). A UK checkout typically needs autocomplete plus details or validation per order. AddressBrain is one lookup at one price: nine monthly plans from Free to £999, 4.9p down to 3.0p per lookup.
One request returns the validated, structured address.
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Monthly plans, change or cancel any month.
Free trial: 30 lookups a day for 30 days, no card required.
Volume pricing above 33,000 lookups a month.
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Data and response
Royal Mail PAF, structured, in under 50ms.
Every AddressBrain result is a full PAF-formatted address returned as separate fields, with sub-building and building name handled properly, latitude and longitude attached, and typical UK response times under 50ms.
Search on a postcode, a partial address or a business name.
Sub-building, building name, thoroughfare, post town and postcode as separate fields.
New-build addresses and 1.4m UK business names included.
Batch and single-lookup validation on the same key.
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Getting started
Swap the autocomplete call, keep your checkout.
If you already have Places wired in, the change is the endpoint and the response mapping. Create an account, copy the key, and your developer can have UK-correct addresses live this afternoon.
Authenticate with a single API bearer token, no OAuth handshake.
Free trial includes 30 lookups a day for 30 days. No card required.
Live usage dashboard, so you can watch spend as it happens.
Distributed, auto-scaling architecture, so peak trading traffic does not queue behind one database.
On every plan, including free
What you get out of the box
Sub-50ms UK response times.
Full PAF-formatted address data, including new-build coverage.
Batch and single-lookup validation on the same key.
Start building in minutes
Create a free account and start returning validated UK addresses in minutes.Start with 30 free lookups a day for 30 days. Test environment, full API docs, and support included.
No credit card required. Officially licensed by Royal Mail.
No credit card required. Officially licensed by Royal Mail.