Plexe Autosuggest vs Google Places Autocomplete for hotel search
Google Places Autocomplete is a general places search. Plexe Autosuggest is built for the search box of a hotel booking flow. This page compares what each returns for that job, and what each costs.
Google's prices and rules as published on Google's own pages, checked 19 October 2026. Sources at the end.
What each returns for a hotel search box
Google's side reflects Place Autocomplete (New) and Place Details (New).
| Google Places Autocomplete | Plexe Autosuggest | |
|---|---|---|
| Results per request | Up to 5 predictions | Up to 20 (8 by default) |
| Coordinates | Not in the prediction; a Place Details or Geocoding call returns them | In every suggestion |
| What it suggests | Any place or business, including addresses | Cities, areas, landmarks, airports, islands, regions, metro areas and hotels |
| Hotels in a place | Not returned | hotel_count on each place; GET /api/regions/{id}/hotels lists them, 250 a page |
| Area to search a supplier with | A viewport rectangle from Place Details | A circle, polygon or multipolygon fitted to the place's hotels (an island nation is searched as its islands), also in ZentrumHub's format |
| Supplier hotel ids | Not returned | Vervotech, ZentrumHub, Hotelbeds and Xeni ids, for approved accounts |
| Display rules | The Google logo is required when results are shown without a Google map | Results can be shown in your own design |
| Storing results | Place IDs only; other Places content may not be pre-fetched, cached or stored beyond Google's exceptions | Hotel ids (ph_…) stay the same across index releases |
| Pricing | Per request or per session, with monthly free caps per SKU | Free up to 5,000 requests a day; then $99 or $499 a month with included requests |
What it costs
Monthly cost for a hotel search box, assuming a search session of 8 requests (keystrokes, debounced) that ends with the traveller picking one place.
| Search sessions a month | Requests a month | Google, cheapest setup | Plexe, cheapest plan | Plexe vs Google |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | 80,000 | $0 | $0 (Trial) | both free |
| 100,000 | 800,000 | $450 | $174 (Growth) | 2.6x lower |
| 1,000,000 | 8,000,000 | $3,550 | $799 (Scale) | 4.4x lower |
| 5,000,000 | 40,000,000 | $9,550 | $3,999 (Scale) | 2.4x lower |
Google's cheapest setup for this job is session pricing: Autocomplete requests in a session that ends with a Place Details call are not charged, and the Place Details Essentials call (which returns the coordinates) is: 10,000 a month free, then $5.00 per 1,000 up to 100,000, $4.00 up to 500,000, $3.00 up to 1,000,000, $1.50 up to 5,000,000. Billing every Autocomplete request instead ($2.83 per 1,000 after the first 10,000, falling with volume) costs more at these volumes. Requesting richer place fields (Place Details Pro, from $17.00 per 1,000) costs more again. Plexe: Trial covers up to 5,000 requests a day; Growth is $99 with 500,000 requests, then $0.25 per 1,000; Scale is $499 with 5,000,000, then $0.10 per 1,000. Fewer requests per session lowers the Plexe figures; Google's stay the same.
When Google is the better choice
- You need street addresses or any kind of business, not just travel destinations and hotels.
- Your page already shows a Google map, so the attribution and the map are in place anyway.
- You need suggestions labelled in the traveller's language: Plexe matches names in any script but labels results in English.
When Plexe is the better choice
- The search box feeds a hotel availability search, and you need the area to search and the hotels in it, not just a point.
- You book through suppliers such as ZentrumHub, Hotelbeds, Vervotech or Xeni and want their ids on the hotels you suggest.
- You want landmarks, airports and metro areas ranked by the hotels people book around them.
- Volume is past the free caps and cost matters.
Sources
- Google Maps Platform pricing: Autocomplete Requests, Place Details Essentials and Pro, Geocoding
- Place Autocomplete (New): five predictions per request, coordinates from Place Details or Geocoding
- Places API policies: the Google logo without a Google map; caching and storage
- Plexe pricing and the Plexe API reference