Google Places API (New)
Browse all Google APIs35
AI ReadinessNon-Ready (F)35/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyMaps 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.
Use for: Find restaurants near a given latitude and longitude, Search for coffee shops in San Francisco by text query, Autocomplete place names as a user types in a search box, Get the opening hours and rating for a specific Google Place
Not supported: Does not handle routing, geocoding-only address conversion, or static map rendering - use for searching and retrieving Google place data only.
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.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Places API (New) to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Places API (New), or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fplaces" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fgoogleapis.com%2Fplaces" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
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
Apply field masks to limit response size and avoid charges for unused fields
Bias search results to a circular or rectangular geographic region
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
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
P
Places API (New)
- Non-Ready (F)35/100
62
Foundational Compliance56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility22
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability63
Security13
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
62
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: B-Signals: 4
73%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
0%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
75%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: CSignals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
22
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
88%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
0%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
0%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
63
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: B-Signals: 1
62%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
13
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: FSignals: 1
12%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the Places API by hand means handling Google OAuth 2.0 or an API key, minting scoped tokens, and setting the required field masks on requests to places.googleapis.com yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Places API from the API Directory, store the credential once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
The Places API search operations take the query in the request body (places:searchText, places:searchNearby), so limit the agent to the operations it needs, such as autocomplete, nearby search, or place details. Every operation the agent can call is one you added to the allowed set, and these are read-only place lookups.
Credential isolation
Your Places API credential is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'find a restaurant nearby' or 'autocomplete a place name', and Jentic returns the matching Places operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
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 your Jentic One instance 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.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Google Places API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which Places operations the agent can call, so you can allow only what a task needs, such as autocomplete, nearby search, text search, or a place details lookup, and withhold the rest. Every one of these operations is a read-only place query, and the Google Cloud credential stays in your instance and is injected at execution time rather than exposed to the agent. That means the agent can search and read place data within the exact set of operations you approved and nothing beyond it.
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