How many locations can I plot on a map?

When you BUILD your map with the Mapping Sheets add-on

  • If using the Basic Free Plan, you can only build a map with up to 50 locations

  • With the Advanced Premium Plan you don't have that restriction

  • However, unless you already have your location coordinates (Latitude and Longitude), you might have to deal with quota limits while building your map, like

    • The Google Geocoding daily quota limit (around 1000/day for @gmail account, 10,000/day for a G Suite account) and

    • The Script execution time limit per BUILD session (6 minutes, usually enough time for Geocoding 300-400 locations)

  • That means a 2,000 locations map could take 2 days (with 3 BUILD sessions each day) for a @gmail account, while a G Suite account would take just 1 day (with around 6 BUILD sessions)

  • To avoid manually clicking the BUILD button so many times, you can set the Unattended BUILD feature from Preferences > Document, that would do that automatically

We have built maps with up to 40,000 locations and we know that the add-on failed to create a map with 220,000 locations

  • So a number in between those two values, would be a limit in the number of locations the add-on can plot on a map

p.s. In addition to how many locations, we should also ask, how long would be take to BUILD my map?

When you VIEW your map with the Mapping web app

As long as the mapping page is using client side browser technology, the performance might be affected with many thousands markers in the map, particularly on the initial loading.

The performance will depend also in the computer available resources (memory, processor and drive)

For large maps

  • You should let the Clusters feature enabled, so it renders faster

  • You can click a cluster at any time to focus on one area, even before the initial loading is completed

  • It is better to keep the Clusters toggle on while still showing a large number of locations

In a recent test with a 30,000 locations map, with a json data file of 7 MB size

  • On a 4 GB 2-year old Chromebook

    • The initial data loading takes 7 seconds, a full clusters rendering 25 seconds, but just 2-7 seconds if/when clicking on a cluster

  • On a 8 GB i5 3-year old Linux computer

    • The initial data loading takes 5 seconds, a full clusters rendering 7 seconds, but just 1-5 seconds if/when clicking on a cluster

p.s. In addition to how many locations, we should also ask, how would be the performance when I VIEW my map?