Hi,
I’m a member of the Apple Developer Program and I’m planning to use Apple Maps Server API together with MapKit JS for a production, customer-facing web service.
I have reviewed the Apple Developer Program License Agreement (including Schedule 6 – Apple Maps Services) and the documentation, but I still need clarification on several points to ensure that our usage fully complies with Apple’s policies.
Daily quota and additional capacity
From the documentation, I understand that there is a daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls per Apple Developer Program membership, shared between MapKit JS and Apple Maps Server API.
When the 25,000 service calls are exceeded, the API returns HTTP 429.
Should this limit be considered a hard limit for production use?
The wording “For additional capacity needs, contact us” is unclear.
Is there any official channel or program to request a higher quota,
or should we assume this is not practically available and design our system to always stay within the documented limit?
Caching of geocoding / reverse-geocoding results
Schedule 6 section 2.5 restricts caching, prefetching, or storing map data except when temporary and only as necessary for Apple Maps Services, and any cached data must be deleted after use.
To understand what “temporary” means in practice, I would like to confirm whether the following scenarios are acceptable:
(a) In-memory cache during a single page or tab session:
- Store geocoding results (latitude/longitude and normalized address) only in a JavaScript in-memory structure (e.g., a Map object) during the lifetime of the browser tab.
- Delete all cached results when the tab is closed or after a short TTL (for example, a few minutes).
(b) sessionStorage with a short TTL:
- Store geocoding results in window.sessionStorage on a per-tab basis.
- Apply a short TTL (for example, a few minutes), and delete the data when the TTL expires or the tab is closed.
Are both (a) and (b) considered acceptable forms of “temporary caching” under section 2.5,
or should we avoid sessionStorage and limit ourselves to purely in-memory (non-persistent) caching?
Use on a commercial customer-facing website
Our intended use case is a public website that:
Displays store locations on a map
Allows users to search for nearby stores
Optionally shows routing directions
We do not do fleet management, asset tracking, enterprise route optimization, or insurance risk scoring.
Is this type of consumer-facing store-locator use case permitted under the Apple Maps Services terms?
Any clarification from the Maps or MapKit teams would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Naoto Omori