An alternative to self-hosting Nominatim
Nominatim, Photon and Pelias are servers with a database import. GridPin is a library that opens a country file in milliseconds. Both have their place.
What is different
GridPin has no server, no database and no import step: pip install gridpin-mcp, download one file, call it from Python, the command line, DuckDB or an AI agent. The file is memory-mapped, so it is ready at once and needs no warm-up.
import gridpin
from gridpin_mcp import sheets
g = gridpin.Geocoder(str(sheets.download("de")))
g.geocode("Unter den Linden 77, 10117 Berlin", 1)
# -> house, Unter den Linden 77, Mitte, 10117
When Nominatim is the better choice
You need the whole world, OpenStreetMap data, points of interest everywhere, or a public search service for many users. GridPin covers seven countries (Brazil, France, Germany without Bavaria, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain) and is built from Overture Maps and national address registries.
How they compare
We measure GridPin against Nominatim and Photon on truth that comes from neither: benchmark, method and every number, including the sets where we lose.