I think it is all down to the usage and performance needed. If you need high resiliency and performances, using a third party API like smartip.io is the way to go.
If the requirements are less strict then using a local db like MaxMind would be the right choice.
As a side note, we offer very simple and well documented libraries in C#, Typescript and PHP.
1. We are different because most of all other services segment the data based on tiers. We return the entire dataset even for free users.
2. Our Free tier is huge compared to other services.
3. We are fast. Our response time is in the region of 50ms, which is really good for the amount to information we return. We don't cache our response, we always return fresh data.
About MaxMind, you are right about how easy would be to have an in-house solution. But a highly scalable, distributed infrastructure like ours guarantees the same response time from multiple locations across the world. Also, having the solution in-house would need updating and maintainig the database periodically as well.
Thanks a lot @somada141! Apologies for any confusion.
Let me clarify: the Free tier covers the first 250k API requests made in a single month. If the number of requests in a month goes beyond the threshold, the API will start returning Forbidden errors. The counter gets reset at the first of each month.
If your service gets more than 250k hits a month, then you will be a perfect match for our "Pro" tier.
This pricing structure, puts us on a league of our own, offering to the developers a huge package of free API calls every single month. Nobody else does it!
That's a very good point. We constantly try to improve the data accuracy of our API. We currently support the following company types: "education", "isp", "hosting", "government", "business". We also expose the domain assigned to the ASN of the IP currently looked up, this would probably give you enough info to implement the logic you are suggesting.
Our pricing structure puts us on a different level compared to all other competitors. I confirm the Pro Tier allows for unlimited lookups, still maintaining consistent latency and stability.
Our platform is completely powered by Microsoft Azure, which allows for a huge level of scalability and stability even under high loads. Which means, we can maintain a consistent latency even under 2B requests a month.
We are updating our data daily, cross-referencing multiple data sources to achieve maximum accuracy.
In terms of accuracy, at the moment, we are using MaxMind databases which guarantees high accuracy, on top of that, we are already in the process of building our own GeoDatabase which will add even more details and information to our offer.
Finally, we already offer open source client libraries for PHP and .Net on GitHub:
We are actually using MaxMind at the moment, even though we are in the process of building our own GeoDatabase. Our API differs from the services you specified since we offer many more data points like:
- currency data
- timezones data
- user agent data
- crypto data
On top of that, our API is extremely easy to use with two simple endpoints to get IP and ASN insights. Also, we don't apply any data segmentation to our responses.
Last but not least, our prices put us on a league of our own with a massive Free tier allowing up to 250,000 requests per month. More info on: https://smartip.io/#pricing-section
SmartIP.io is a new IP Geolocation API and Threat Intelligence service which exposes a huge amount of accurate and reliable IP data for a very convenient price.
We expose both IP and ASN lookups with two simple endpoints, we don't segment data response by Tiers, as most of our competitors do, instead, we return the entire dataset in our responses even in the Free tier.
Our pricing structure is unbeatable as well, signing up, we allow up to 250,000 requests per month for Free! More information on https://smartip.io/#pricing-section
Why should I use a GeoLocation API
Most companies use IP Geolocation APIs to identify their users to enrich the user experience based on their location, currency or timezone. Another use case could be identify threats and prevent frauds in time looking for Proxy connections, TOR nodes or just filtering Crawlers traffic. SmartIP.io can detect if the an IP is a proxy, TOR or even a crawler. More information on https://smartip.io/#feature-section
Why SmartIP.io
Even though the API market is full of Geolocation API already, we realised that they all offer very similar datasets, and they all tend to be really expensive very quickly, segmenting data responses by tiers and adding costs to their customers which do not cost anything to them.
Our approach aims to solve this problem exposing single endpoints which return all information with no segmentation by Tier and with a huge Free tier which allows up to 250,000 requests a month.
We are the only one to expose Crypto data. Our service can identify if a specified IP is running a Bitcoin node with additional information like the port from where the node is running from. We are in the process of expanding this dataset with additional blockchains and more data.
Our features
- Geolocation data: at the moment we are using MaxMind database, but we are in the process of building our own GeoDatabase.
- Currency data
- Timezone data
- Security data: Our service exposes Proxy data, Crawler data and TOR data.
-- Crawler data: we detect the crawler type, the crawler company
-- TOR data: we detect TOR exit node identifier, the published data and the last update date.
-- Proxy data: we detect the proxy type like "proxy anonimyzers", "proxy attackers", etc.
- Crypto data
- We are powered by Microsoft Azure. We are 100% backed by the best cloud solution out there with no self-hosted servers. This guarantees extremely high performances and high SLA.
- Official client libraries available on Github for .NetCore, PHP and Javascript.
- Simple and intuitive Dashboard to manage your API keys and monitor your API calls.
- Once registered, we offer a huge Free Tier which allows up to 250,000 requests a month.
SmartIP.io is a IP Geolocation API and Threat Intelligence service which will make developers life very easy.
We expose both IP and ASN lookups with two simple endpoints, we don't segment data response by Tiers, as most of our competitors do, instead, we return the entire dataset in our responses even in the Free tier.
Our pricing structure is unbeatable as well, signing up, we allow up to 250,000 requests per month for Free! More information on https://smartip.io/#pricing-section
Why should I use a GeoLocation API
Most companies use IP Geolocation APIs to identify their users to enrich the user experience based on their location, currency or timezone.
Another use case could be identify threats and prevent frauds in time looking for Proxy connections, TOR nodes or just filtering Crawlers traffic. SmartIP.io can detect if the an IP is a proxy, TOR or even a crawler. More information on https://smartip.io/#feature-section
Why SmartIP.io
Even though the API market is full of Geolocation API already, we realised that they all offer very similar datasets, and they all tend to be really expensive very quickly, segmenting data responses by tiers and adding costs to their customers which do not cost anything to them.
Our approach aims to solve this problem exposing single endpoints which return all information with no segmentation by Tier and with a huge Free tier which allows up to 250,000 requests a month.
We are the only one to expose Crypto data. Our service can identify if a specified IP is running a Bitcoin node with additional information like the port from where the node is running from. We are in the process of expanding this dataset with additional blockchains and more data.
Our features
- Geolocation data: at the moment we are using MaxMind database, but we are in the process of building our own GeoDatabase.
- Currency data
- Timezone data
- Security data: Our service exposes Proxy data, Crawler data and TOR data.
-- Crawler data: we detect the crawler type, the crawler company
-- TOR data: we detect TOR exit node identifier, the published data and the last update date.
-- Proxy data: we detect the proxy type like "proxy anonimyzers", "proxy attackers", etc.
- Crypto data
- We are powered by Microsoft Azure.
We are 100% backed by the best cloud solution out there with no self-hosted servers. This guarantees extremely high performances and high SLA.
- Official client libraries available on Github for .NetCore, PHP and Javascript.
- Simple and intuitive Dashboard to manage your API keys and monitor your API calls.
- Once registered, we offer a huge Free Tier which allows up to 250,000 requests a month.
Would be nice to know your opinion to our product..