Places API (New)

Name: Places API (New) API
Brand: Google Places API (New)
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecMaps GeolocationPlaces Searchoauth24 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search Google's place database by text query, location, or autocomplete prefix and retrieve place details including address, hours, rating, and photos.

Quickstart

Get started with Places API (New) in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"find places near a location"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Places API (New) API.

Search places by free-text query with optional location bias and category filtering

Find places within a radius of a latitude and longitude with type filters such as restaurant or cafe

Autocomplete place queries character-by-character for typeahead UIs

Retrieve a single Place resource by name with selectable fields like opening hours, ratings, and photos

GET STARTED

Start building with Places API (New) API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The Google Places API (New) lets applications search for businesses and points of interest, autocomplete place queries as the user types, find nearby places by category, and fetch detailed information for a specific place by resourceName. The four endpoints in v1 cover text search, nearby search, autocomplete, and place details, with field masks that let callers control billing-relevant response size. Each Place response can include addresses, opening hours, ratings, photos, and Plus Codes drawn from Google Maps' global place database.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Places API (New) API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Place Search Autocomplete

Build a typeahead search experience that suggests places as the user types, similar to the Google Maps search bar. The places:autocomplete endpoint returns suggested place predictions for a partial query in milliseconds and accepts a sessionToken so each user typing session is billed as a single autocomplete-plus-details transaction. Implementations typically debounce keystrokes and forward the final selection to places:searchText or a place details lookup.

POST /v1/places:autocomplete with {input: 'mountain v', locationBias: {circle: {center: {latitude: 37.4, longitude: -122.1}, radius: 5000}}, sessionToken: '...'} and return the top 5 predictions.

Nearby Restaurant Discovery

Power a 'restaurants near me' or 'open now' feature inside a travel or delivery app. The places:searchNearby endpoint takes a circular location restriction, an array of included place types such as restaurant or cafe, and returns up to 20 ranked results per call. Field masks ensure the response includes only the fields the UI renders (for example displayName, rating, currentOpeningHours), keeping billing predictable.

POST /v1/places:searchNearby with includedTypes=['restaurant'], locationRestriction.circle.center=current GPS, radius=1500, and X-Goog-FieldMask='places.displayName,places.rating,places.currentOpeningHours'.

Travel Itinerary Enrichment

Enrich a travel itinerary by attaching ratings, opening hours, photos, and addresses to each named destination. Use places:searchText to resolve a free-form name like 'Sushi Saito Tokyo' to a Place resource, then GET the place details with a field mask for the data the itinerary card displays. A 20-stop itinerary can be enriched in a single batch of API calls in under a second.

POST /v1/places:searchText with textQuery='Sushi Saito Tokyo', then GET /v1/{place.name} with X-Goog-FieldMask='id,displayName,formattedAddress,rating,regularOpeningHours,photos'.

AI Agent Location Lookup via Jentic

Travel and concierge agents that need to ground a user's request ('book me a quiet cafe near the office') in real-world places can call the Places API through Jentic without managing API keys or field masks directly. Jentic stores the Google Cloud key in its vault and exposes one search query per intent so the agent picks the right operation in a single step.

Search Jentic for 'find places near a location', load the places.searchNearby schema, and execute it with the user's coordinates and includedTypes=['cafe'].

Key Endpoints

4 endpoints — the google places api (new) lets applications search for businesses and points of interest, autocomplete place queries as the user types, find nearby places by category, and fetch detailed information for a specific place by resourcename.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/v1/places:autocomplete

Autocomplete place predictions for a partial query

POST

/v1/places:searchNearby

Find places within a radius of a coordinate

POST

/v1/places:searchText

Search places by free-text query

GET

/v1/{name}

Get detailed information for a specific place

POST

/v1/places:autocomplete

Autocomplete place predictions for a partial query

POST

/v1/places:searchNearby

Find places within a radius of a coordinate

POST

/v1/places:searchText

Search places by free-text query

GET

/v1/{name}

Get detailed information for a specific place

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Google Cloud API keys for the Places API are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped tokens at call time so the raw API key never enters agent context or logs.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like 'find a restaurant nearby' or 'autocomplete a place name' and receive the correct Places operation with its full input schema, including field-mask hints.

Time to first call

Direct integration: 1-2 days for API key provisioning, field-mask tuning, and billing setup. Through Jentic: under 1 hour.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Google My Business Information API

Edit the business listing whose place you read via Places

Choose My Business when the task is updating a place owner's listing; use Places when reading public place data.

Alternative

TomTom Search API

Search places, geocode, and look up POIs without using Google Cloud

Choose TomTom when the project cannot use Google Maps platform or needs different per-call pricing.

Complementary

TomTom Routing API

Calculate driving routes between places resolved through Places search

Choose TomTom Routing after Places has resolved origin and destination coordinates and the agent needs turn-by-turn directions.

FAQs

Specific to using Places API (New) API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Google Places API use?

The Places API (New) accepts an API key passed via the X-Goog-Api-Key header or OAuth 2.0 access tokens for server-side calls. Through Jentic the API key or OAuth credential is held in the Jentic vault and injected at call time so agents never see the raw key.

Can I get opening hours and photos with the Places API?

Yes. The Place resource includes regularOpeningHours, currentOpeningHours, photos, rating, and userRatingCount fields. Request them by adding the field names to the X-Goog-FieldMask header on the GET /v1/{name} or search calls — fields not listed in the mask are not returned and are not billed.

What are the rate limits for the Google Places API?

The Places API uses Google Cloud quotas measured in queries per minute per project. Per-call billing is based on which fields are requested via the field mask, so large field masks can hit the per-day spend cap faster. Quotas can be raised through the Google Cloud Console.

How do I autocomplete place queries through Jentic?

Run jentic search 'autocomplete a Google place query', load the schema for POST /v1/places:autocomplete, and execute it with input set to the partial text and a sessionToken to bundle the autocomplete and a follow-up details call into one billable session.

Is the Google Places API free?

The Places API is paid, billed per request with field-mask-aware pricing. Google Cloud offers a recurring monthly credit that covers a baseline volume of calls. Pricing per SKU is published at developers.google.com/maps/billing-and-pricing.

Can I search for places only within a specific country or region?

Yes. Both places:searchText and places:autocomplete accept a locationRestriction (rectangle or circle) and includedRegionCodes to constrain results to specific countries. places:searchNearby requires a circular locationRestriction with a center coordinate and radius.