I implemented Bing Maps in Galaxie Blog (the blog you're reading now) several years ago and recently had to migrate to Azure Maps due to the retirement of Bing Maps in June. I will discuss how to implement static maps and directional routing in the following articles. However, I want to introduce Azure Maps and share my general impressions first.

Azure Maps is a comprehensive mapping platform and is nearly as competitive as Bing Maps before it, but it has some flaws. 

Table of Contents

What is Azure Maps?

Like Bing Maps before it, the Azure Maps API allows you to integrate rich map functionality into mobile and web-based applications. Unlike Bing Maps, Microsoft now requires a credit card upfront when signing up for an Azure Maps account. However, that said, Microsoft is more generous with other paid map providers, such as Google Maps, and I personally have not been charged for usage on my Azure Maps account.

Differences Between Bing Maps and Azure Maps

Bing Maps has more functionality; however, Microsoft deprecated Bing Maps for non-enterprise users in June 2025 in order to focus its development resources on Azure Maps. Like Bing Maps, Azure Maps offers search capabilities, static maps, geolocation services, and routing with traffic overlays. One of the new features is that Azure Maps has also added weather overlays. Azure Maps has also moved to the cloud and is now completely integrated with the Azure platform.

Azure Maps now requires a month-to-month pay-as-you-go pricing and no longer offers annual licenses. The pricing model is less generous than Bing Maps; however, there are 5k free base map tile transactions per month. A transaction is generally equal to 15 tile requests, and you may be billed per 1,000 requests after the free transactions are exhausted. However, as I mentioned above, I have not been billed personally, and I used Azure Maps extensively during my development process. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-maps/ for more information.

The map engine on the back-end has changed. Bing Maps uses HERE and the open-sourced OpenStreetMaps, while Azure Maps now uses TomTom, a proprietary platform. From a practical standpoint, there is not much difference between these two mapping platforms for the map developer. In fact, TomTom itself uses OpenStreetMaps data for map visualization and contributes financially to TomTom to improve and maintain the TomTom platform.

Bing and Azure Maps handle latitude and longitude coordinates differently. Azure Maps uses longitude, latitude, the GeoJSON standard, to represent geographical coordinates, whereas Bing Maps reverses the coordinates and uses latitude and longitude. Special attention is needed when trying to follow code examples that were initially written for Bing Maps using latitude and longitude. When developing code, if your maps incorrectly display coordinates somewhere in China or eastern Asia, chances are you're using longitude and latitude in the reverse order!

Azure Map Issues

Lack of Integrated Map Controls

One of the reasons I was initially compelled to use Bing Maps was the variety of rich controls that were available. I could easily integrate various map controls to allow users to select a geographical region and create sophisticated map routes with autosuggest and drop-and-drop functionality using just a few lines of code. However, with Azure Maps, there are no comprehensive pre-built controllers. There are some primitive controls, like zoom and pan, but nothing like an integrated auto-suggest map control that Bing Maps used to offer; Unfortunately, you'll have to roll everything your own.

Due to the lack of any pre-built map controls, you need to invest a lot of time developing interfaces just to input data. If you don't have the time or developer expertise, you should probably look at a different mapping provider. That said, in the next couple of articles, I will show you how to develop some basic integrated controls.

Authentication Methods and Using CORS to Restrict Usage are Unnecessarily Complex

Azure Maps has introduced new authentication methods. However, the authentication methods and other security approaches are cumbersome and complex. Implementing these authentication methods, along with CORS restrictions, is tedious and requires extensive custom development. Implementing authentication or CORS requires a complex custom backend endpoint, and there is no easy way to restrict your Azure Maps API key to specific domains.

Requiring custom backend services for authentication is understandable. Authentication is not typically required for applications unless your dealing with sensitive content. However, I am somewhat shocked that you can't easily use CORS to restrict your Azure Maps API key to specific domains. CORS is available in Azure Maps- but it only secures traffic to the Azure portal or a custom endpoint if one was made. It is very difficult to secure your Azure Maps API key from malicious use.

I think that Microsoft missed the boat here and that they come out with a relatively simple way to secure your API key from malicious use. However, you can create alerts and rules if your usage exceeds a certain threshold. You can also set up a rule to disable your API key if your usage is approaching the free tier limit. I would highly recommend using these alerts when building sites that are exposed to the public!

Summary

Azure Maps is a comprehensive mapping solution that offers generous usage for free. Azure Maps seamlessly integrates with other Azure Cloud services. It is a fantastic value-based proposition for current Microsoft programmers, and especially for Azure customers who want to implement geospatial mapping. It is also a good value if you want low-cost enterprise-class mapping services and have the expertise and time to develop interfaces that use the Azure Maps API. If you don't have these resources and having free services is not critical, you may want to consider Google Maps or a different mapping provider.