Google Static Maps API scale & size

Question

I am a bit confused with the new billing model for the google static maps API. Previously, you needed a premium plan API to request images larger than 640 x 480. With the new pay-as-you-go pricing model (as of 16th of July), do you still need a premium plan to be able to get bigger images, or can I just enable billing and request these bigger images? I enabled billing and used a signed url to get an image of 2000x2000 pixels (scale=1), but it didn't work as I got back an image of 640x480. Am I missing something, or do I still need a premium plan to achieve this?

Answer 1

At the moment only Premium plan users have a high resolution 2048x2048 images by default. New Google Maps Platform doesn't have this feature enabled yet. There is a feature request in Google issue tracker to make these images available for Google Maps Platform as well. You can see the feature request here:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/110570733

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Update

Google marked a feature request as solved with the following statement

We now have an update on this issue: access to 2048x2048 Static Maps will be granted on a case by case basis. Please create a support case to open a personalized communication channel https://support.google.com/googleapi/contact/maps_api_tech_support