Spaw vs MaxMind
MaxMind sells GeoIP as three per-query web services — Country, City Plus and Insights — and as downloadable databases, with proxy and anonymiser detection reserved for the Insights tier.
The table uses MaxMind's public pricing and documentation pages as checked on 2026-09-10, and Spaw's own pricing page. A row those pages carry no value for is marked "not on the pages read" rather than guessed at, and that is a statement about the reading and not about what MaxMind publishes.
| spaw | maxmind | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay-as-you-go credit packs, or optional monthly plans that deposit the same credits every month for less; both through Stripe Checkout, credits from either never expire | Per query, by service, with no minimum published: "If you estimate your volume of queries to be over $2,500 a month, contact us to discuss rates." |
| Free tier | 10 free credits every month, no card required | A no-cost trial is offered ("Experience the functionality and benefits of our GeoIP web services at no cost"); no free monthly allowance is stated on the page checked |
| Price per 1,000 at about 10k | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | $0.10 per 1,000 for Country ($0.0001 a query), $0.30 for City Plus ($0.0003) and $2.00 for Insights ($0.002) |
| Price per 1,000 at about 100k | $4.99 (Volume pack: 100,000 credits for $499), or $3.99 on the Volume monthly plan (100,000 credits for $399 a month) | The same rates: the page publishes no volume tiers, and asks you to contact them above $2,500 a month |
| Addresses no feed covered billed | An answered address costs 1 credit whatever its flags say; a flag no feed could evaluate answers null rather than false, and the answer costs the same | not on the pages read |
| Reserved and private ranges billed | No: reserved, private, loopback, CGNAT, documentation and multicast ranges answer reason reserved_range and are free, and so are repeats within 7 days | not on the pages read |
| Feeds behind the flags | Public feeds, each named in the answer with the date it was synced: DB-IP Lite and RFC 8805 geofeeds for location, the five registries' delegated statistics for allocation, Spamhaus DROP and ASN-DROP and abuse.ch Feodo Tracker for blocklists, the Tor Project's exit list and Onionoo, the Mullvad, NordVPN and Private Internet Access server lists plus the open X4BNet lists, Apple's iCloud Private Relay egress list, the cloud providers' own published ranges, and the verification files Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo and Ahrefs publish for their crawlers. | Not described on the pages checked. Insights is documented as "Everything in Country and City Plus, + Proxy Detection, and confidence factors, user count and type, static IP score, demographic data, and anonymizers", so anonymiser detection is the top tier only. |
| Refresh cadence | Every feed re-syncs daily, the botnet command-and-control list hourly, and the geofeed crawl weekly. Each response names every dataset it consulted with the date it was last synced, and /status lists them all. | Not published on the pages checked: the database-update guide tells you to "check periodically throughout the day for a release" rather than naming a schedule. |
| Geolocation source | The DB-IP Lite database, overridden wherever the operator publishes the location itself — an RFC 8805 geofeed, Apple's relay list, a VPN provider's server list. location_source says which answered, and location_confidence is graded from a weekly accuracy report rather than asserted. | Its own database: Country returns "Data associated with the country of an IP address", City Plus locates "to the zip or postal code level and the associated ISP or organization". |
| Bulk limit | 100,000 addresses per bulk job, with an HMAC-signed completion webhook | not on the pages read |
| Batch API | 1,000 addresses per synchronous request; repeats inside the list are looked up once | not on the pages read |
| Rate limit | 50 requests per second per key on the IP endpoints | not on the pages read |
| Official SDKs | Python, Node.js, PHP | not on the pages read |
| Data retention | Nothing: no history row and no log line carrying the address, only a hashed 7-day marker that makes a repeat free. Bulk input lists and result files are deleted with the job after 30 days. | not on the pages read |
checked 2026-09-10 · sources: MaxMind GeoIP web services, MaxMind database update guide
When MaxMind fits better
Teams that want geolocation at the lowest published per-query price and are content to buy Insights, at twenty times the City Plus rate, for anonymiser detection.
- The only per-query price among the IP services compared here, and a low one: $0.0001 for a country answer
- Confidence factors ship with Insights rather than with every answer
- Databases are sold for local use as well as the web services
When Spaw fits better
Developers who want every public IP feed compiled, dated and named for them, with a risk score whose weights are published so it can be recomputed or ignored.
- MaxMind puts proxy and anonymiser detection on its most expensive tier; Spaw's Tor, VPN, relay, datacenter, crawler and blocklist flags are in every 1-credit answer
- MaxMind's per-query rates are lower than Spaw's credit price; a Spaw credit buys every signal at once rather than one service
- Spaw names the dataset and its sync date behind each flag; MaxMind publishes no refresh schedule on the pages checked
- Spaw's flags are tri-state: null means a feed did not evaluate the address, never that the answer is no
Questions
Does Spaw charge for addresses its feeds do not cover?
Spaw bills per answered address. Reserved, private, loopback, CGNAT, documentation and multicast ranges answer reason reserved_range and are free, and so is a repeat of the same address within seven days. A flag no feed could evaluate answers null rather than false: the address still costs 1 credit, and the null tells you the signal was not checked instead of pretending it was. MaxMind does not publish how it bills them.
Can I run a log file or an export through Spaw?
Yes. A bulk run takes up to 100,000 addresses from the dashboard or the API and returns one row per input address, in input order, with every flag, the risk score and the signals that made it. Repeats inside the list are looked up once, reserved ranges cost nothing, and the finish is announced on an HMAC-signed webhook.
Is there a free tier?
Every Spaw account receives 10 free credits at the start of each month with no card on file, and unused credits accumulate. MaxMind offers: A no-cost trial is offered ("Experience the functionality and benefits of our GeoIP web services at no cost"); no free monthly allowance is stated on the page checked.
Try Spaw on your own list
Free credits every month, no card. Upload a list, keep your columns, and download only the rows you want. See the pricing page for every rule, or the MaxMind alternatives.
MaxMind is a trademark of its owner. Spaw is not affiliated with it. Markdown version: /compare/maxmind.md