FreeGeoIP.net Webservice - Is the Service Trustworthy?

Question

I was evaluating the Free Geo IP Webservice provided by FreeGeoIP.net for one of my Enterprise Clients. They are looking for a 'free' solution if available, because in terms of volume, their need is small. A major question is given the highest priority. Is the data authentic and trustworthy? Have you used this service for IP to location tracking in any of your projects? If yes, what is your experience on its trustworthiness?

I know about Maxmind and couple of others. And FreeGeoIP.net claims that their data is provided by Maxmind itself. But is that statement true? Please let me know if you have bad experience with the availability of the service.

Answer 1

I can't really answer about their trustworthiness. They link to the source code for the site and it sure looks like it's using the MaxMind GeoIP data. Presumably they're using the GeoLite2 database. You could use that yourself easily enough, of course.

Answer 2

According to FreeGeoIP web site, their quota is 10,000 queries per hour. Once this limit is reached, all of your requests will result 403 in HTTP until your quota is cleared. It sounds like your are likely to hit with long downtime if there is sudden increasing traffics in an hour.

There is another free service from IPInfoDB.com, their rate limit is 2 calls/second, 403 in error code until quota is cleared by second. This service might causing less downtime. According to their web site, they are using IP2Location LITE database.

Answer 3

I have been using FreeGeoIP.net for about past three months in one of my projects and so far my experience is good.

I don't know if they are actually using MaxMind's free Database but i tested it out and all of my test cases passed though. The freegeoip.net gave me the same result as that of MaxMind database.

Although it is using Free MaxMind database, so it's less accurate than the trial of Maxmind's paid service.

So the bottom line is, if your need is small and fits within FreeGeoIP's quota, i recommend using it.