Scraping Google Maps: The Real Cost vs Using a Dedicated Tool

Scraping Google Maps: the real cost of building ($56,000-70,000 first year) vs Ritchy ($149/month). 4 months development, annual prepaid APIs, continuous maintenance. Discover why your MVP will be infinitely less polished than Ritchy.

What "Scraping Google Maps" Actually Involves

When people say "I'll just scrape Google Maps," they're thinking of a 100-line Python script that runs for a few hours. The reality is much more complex.

The Basic Technical Approach

There are essentially three ways to scrape Google Maps:

Direct HTML scraping - You send HTTP requests to Google Maps, parse the HTML, extract the data. This is what everyone tries first.

Using the official API - Google offers a Places API that gives legal access to data. It provides the same businesses you see on Maps, but it's expensive (about $0.032 per request) and has strict rate limits.

Browser automation - Puppeteer or Selenium controlling a real Chrome browser to simulate a human user. More robust than HTML scraping, but slower and resource-intensive.

None of these approaches are trivial. Here's why.

The Technical Problems You'll Encounter

Rate Limiting and IP Blocking

Google isn't stupid. If you send 1000 requests from the same IP in 10 minutes, you're banned. Immediately.

Solution: Proxy rotation. You need residential proxies (datacenter proxies are burned instantly). That costs between $50-200 per month for a decent pool. And you need to manage rotation logic, detect when a proxy is banned, automatically replace it.

Reality: You'll spend a week debugging why your proxies don't work, then another implementing ban detection and automatic rotation.

CAPTCHA and Bot Detection

Google has sophisticated bot detection systems. Even with proxies, even with a real browser, you'll trigger CAPTCHAs.

Solution: CAPTCHA solving services (2Captcha, Anti-Captcha, etc.) that cost about $2-3 per 1000 CAPTCHAs. Or you spend hours simulating perfect human behavior (mouse movements, random timing, etc.).

Reality: Your scraper stops randomly because a CAPTCHA blocks everything. You add CAPTCHA detection, integration with a solving service, error handling when it fails. Another week.

Changing Data Structure

Google regularly changes the HTML structure of Google Maps. Your CSS selectors that worked yesterday break today.

Solution: Write resilient code with multiple fallback strategies, active monitoring to detect when it breaks, continuous maintenance.

Reality: Every 2-3 months, your scraper stops working. You need to analyze the changes, adapt the code, redeploy. And meanwhile, your prospecting is blocked.

Google Maps API Limitations

Even if you decide to use the official Google Places API to stay legal, you'll quickly hit a major problem: Google limits results to 60 businesses per search.

This isn't a bug. It's intentional. Google put this limit specifically to prevent people from mass-extracting data, even through the paid API.

The concrete problem: You search for "restaurants in Paris"? There are thousands of restaurants. Google gives you 60. How do you get the other 5,000?

Technical solution: You need to geographically split your search area. Instead of searching "Paris", you search dozens or hundreds of small overlapping zones to cover all of Paris. This is called "grid splitting".

What this means:

• Algorithm to intelligently split a zone into grids
• Logic to detect when a zone has more than 60 results
• Automatic subdivision of zones that exceed the limit
• Deduplication of businesses that appear in multiple zones
• Optimization to minimize the number of requests (and therefore API costs)

Additional development time: 2-3 weeks for a robust system.

And even with that, for large cities or broad searches, you'll make hundreds of API requests. At $0.032 per request, it adds up fast.

Ritchy already built this entire optimized grid splitting system. When you search in Paris, we automatically handle the splitting, multiple requests, deduplication. You just see the results.

Performance and Scalability

Scraping Google Maps is slow. Even with optimized browser automation, you're doing maybe 50-100 businesses per minute. For 10,000 businesses, that takes 2-3 hours.

Solution: Parallelization with multiple instances, queue management, load distribution. Server infrastructure that costs money.

Reality: You start with a script running on your laptop. Then you realize it doesn't scale. You spend two weeks building a distributed architecture with workers, queues, monitoring.

The Real Cost Calculation

Let's be honest about what it really costs to build your own prospecting tool.

API and External Services Costs

Google Maps API (Text Search): $0.032 per request

• For 50,000 businesses/month with grid splitting: ~$40/month

That's just to get name, address, phone. Now you need to enrich this data.

Professional email providers:

• Specialized email provider: $100-300/month
• Some require annual commitment to access advanced APIs
• Minimum annual budget: $1,200-3,600

Professional phone number providers:

• Specialized phone number provider: $200-400/month
• Often annual payment required for API access
• Annual budget: $2,400-4,800

Email verification:

• ZeroBounce, NeverBounce: $50-150/month
• Essential to avoid bounces
• Annual budget: $600-1,800

Government data APIs:

• INPI/INSEE for France: free but limited
• EU enrichment services: $100-200/month
• Annual budget: $1,200-2,400

LLM for company descriptions:

• OpenAI, Anthropic: $50-200/month depending on usage
• Annual budget: $600-2,400

Website scraping (tech stack):

• Proxy infrastructure + scrapers: $100-200/month
• Annual budget: $1,200-2,400

Total external services: $7,200-17,400/year

And that's not counting that several of these services require upfront annual payment to access their APIs. You need to pay $5,000-10,000 upfront just to get access to the tools.

Human Development Costs

To build a functional MVP (and we're talking about a basic MVP, not a polished product like Ritchy), count on:

4 months of full-time development with 2 developers

At an average salary of $3,500/month (including benefits) per junior/mid-level developer:

• 2 developers × $3,500 × 4 months = $28,000

Infrastructure and Maintenance

Servers and infrastructure: $100-200/month = $1,200-2,400/year

Ongoing maintenance:Once the MVP is in production, it needs maintenance. Count on at least 1 developer half-time to manage bugs, API changes, and optimizations.

Maintenance cost: $1,750/month = $21,000/year

The Real Total Cost

First year (basic MVP):

• Initial development (4 months, 2 devs): $28,000
• External services (APIs): $7,200-17,400
• Infrastructure: $1,200-2,400
• Maintenance (remaining 8 months): $14,000
• Total: $50,400-61,800

Following years:

• External services: $7,200-17,400
• Infrastructure: €$1,200-2,400
• Maintenance: $21,000
• Total: $29,400-40,800/year

And remember: this MVP will be infinitely less polished than Ritchy. You'll have the equivalent of what Ritchy was doing 2 years ago, not what it does today.

What Scraping DOESN'T Give You

This is where most people realize the real problem. Scraping Google Maps gives you:

• Company name
• Address
• Phone number (sometimes)
• Category
• Opening hours
• Reviews

What you're missing to actually prospect:

• Professional emails of officers - Google Maps rarely has that. You need to scrape websites, use enrichment APIs, combine multiple sources.
• Mobile numbers of decision-makers - The number on Google Maps is often reception, not the decision-maker.
• SIREN/SIRET and official data - Verifying legality, financial health, legal information requires integration with INPI/INSEE.
• Officer information - Names, roles, contacts, social profiles.
• Technology stack - What payment system, booking platform, marketing tools they use.
• Business intelligence - Description of activity, services, positioning.

To have all that, you need to build integrations with multiple paid services, as detailed in the cost calculation above. And each integration takes development time.

And You Still Don't Have a CRM

Once you have all this data, you need to organize it, manage it, visualize it.

You need:

• User interface to visualize prospects on a map
• Tag and category system
• Status management (new, contacted, qualified, lost)
• Notes and history
• Lists and segmentation
• Export to your main CRM

Another 4-8 weeks of development for a basic interface. $6,000-12,000.

Legality: Dangerous Gray Zone

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: scraping Google Maps violates Google's Terms of Service.

Google says it clearly in their ToS: no automated access without permission. In theory, they can:

• Permanently ban your IPs and accounts
• Send a cease and desist
• In extreme cases, sue

In practice: Thousands of people scrape Google Maps daily. Google doesn't go after everyone. But you're in a legal gray zone, and if you're building a business on it, that's a risk.

The legitimate approach: Use the official Google Places API. It's legal, stable, supported. But:

• It's expensive (about $0.032 per Text Search request)
• Rate limits are strict
• The 60-result limit requires complex grid splitting
• Costs accumulate quickly at scale

The Alternative: Ritchy Already Did All This Work

Here's the reality: building a complete local prospecting system costs you $50,000-62,000 the first year, then $29,000-41,000 per year.

Ritchy already invested that engineering effort. Here's what you get:

The Infrastructure Is Already Built

• Legal Google Maps integration via official API, no ban risk
• Ultra-optimized grid splitting managed automatically, you don't see the complexity
• Automatic multi-source enrichment with waterfall system
• Government data for 7 European countries integrated (SIREN/SIRET, equivalents)
• Technology stack automatically detected for each business
• Officer contacts with professional emails and mobiles
• AI description generated for each company

All of this works now. Not in 6 months. Now.

The Interface Is Already Built

• Map search with keywords exactly like Google Maps, but better
• Intuitive territory visualization, zoom in and out
• Prospect organization with tags, statuses, notes, lists
• Easy export to your existing CRM
• CSV import to enrich your existing prospects

No need to build your own UI. It's already there, tested by thousands of users.

Maintenance Is Our Problem, Not Yours

When Google changes something, it's our problem. When an enrichment source goes down, we find an alternative. When there's a bug, we fix it.

You do prospecting. We manage infrastructure.

The Real Economic Calculation

Option 1: Build It Yourself

First year:

• Initial development (4 months, 2 devs): $28,000
• External services (APIs): $7,200-17,400
• Infrastructure: $1,200-2,400
• Maintenance (remaining 8 months): $14,000
• CRM interface: $6,000-12,000
• Total: $56,400-69,800

Following years:

• External services: $7,200-17,400
• Infrastructure: $1,200-2,400
• Maintenance: $21,000
• Total: $29,400-40,800/year

Time before operational: 4-6 months

Option 2: Ritchy

First year:

• Essentials plan ($149/month with no commitment): $1,748
• Additional credits if needed: variable

Total: ~$1,700-5,000/year

Time before operational: Today

The ROI Is Obvious

You save $50,000-65,000 the first year.

And most importantly: your developers work on your product, not on a Google Maps scraper and enrichment API integrations.

When Building Yourself Makes Sense

To be honest, there are a few cases where building yourself might make sense:

If you're a tech company with very specific needs - Like you need to integrate prospecting deeply into your product, with completely custom workflows.

In this case, you don't necessarily need to build everything yourself. Ritchy offers custom contracts where we make our infrastructure available: you benefit from our Google Maps integration, our enrichment sources, our European government data, without having to rebuild everything. You just build the business layer specific to your needs.

If you're prospecting at massive scale - Millions of businesses per month. At that level, standard tool costs can exceed internal development. But again, our Enterprise contracts with dedicated infrastructure might be more cost-effective than building and maintaining everything yourself.

If you already have the infrastructure - Your team already has scraping systems, proxies, enrichment for other needs. Adding Google Maps is marginal. Even in this case, integrating our API can save you months of development on Google Maps specifics and multi-source enrichment.

If local prospecting is your product - You're building a Ritchy competitor. In that case, yes, you need to develop. Or let's talk about a white-label partnership.

For 95% of companies that just want to prospect efficiently: building yourself is a waste of time and money. For the remaining 5% with truly specific needs: contact us to discuss a custom solution that lets you benefit from our infrastructure without having to rebuild everything.

Questions You're Asking Yourself

"But I just want to extract 1000 businesses once, don't need a subscription"

Fair point. For a one-shot extraction, you can:

• Pay a freelancer on Fiverr ($100-300 for a file)
• Use Ritchy as a one-time extraction service, cancel subscription whenever you want, no commitment
• Ritchy offers a free trial that might cover your needs

But if you prospect regularly, the subscription becomes profitable after 2-3 extractions.

"I'm a developer, I love coding, I want to do it myself"

I understand. Scraping is an interesting technical problem. But ask yourself: is this the best use of your time? You could use those 4 months to develop your product, acquire customers, or simply bill clients.

Code that generates money > code that saves money.

"How do I know Ritchy will continue to exist?"

That's a legitimate risk with any tool. But building yourself also has risks: your developer leaves, you no longer have time to maintain, costs explode.

With Ritchy, you can export your data anytime. You're not trapped.

"Is Ritchy's data as fresh as if I scraped myself?"

Ritchy uses the Google Maps API in real-time. When you search, we query Google at that moment. The data is as fresh as manual scraping, without your infrastructure delay.

"Why are API costs so high?"

Quality enrichment providers (emails, phones) have significant data acquisition costs. Many require annual commitments because they give access to premium databases. That's the price of quality, verified data. With Ritchy, you share these costs with thousands of other users.

The Bottom Line

Scraping Google Maps yourself is like building your own car because you need transportation.

Yes, technically, you can do it. Some people do. But for the vast majority, it's a massive waste of time and money when solutions already exist.

The real cost of building yourself:

• $56,000-70,000 the first year
• $29,000-41,000 following years
• 4-6 months before operational
• Continuous maintenance that never stops
• Legal risk with Google if you scrape
• Required upfront annual payments for multiple services
• And you'll only have an MVP, infinitely less polished than Ritchy

Ritchy:

• $129-599/month, no commitment
• Operational today
• Maintenance managed by us
• Legal and stable
• Complete solution: search + enrichment + organization
• No forced annual commitments with dozens of providers
• Mature and optimized product

If your business is building prospecting tools, build your own. If your business is selling your products/services, use Ritchy and spend your time selling.

The best entrepreneurs know when to build and when to buy. For local prospecting, buying is the right choice for 95% of cases.

Ready to save $50,000 and 6 months? Try Ritchy for free and start prospecting today, not in 6 months.

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