We compared 54 pairs of maps across three cities (New York, San Francisco, and London) and found several significant differences between Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Here’s a summary of what we found:

 

Apple, on average, labeled more cities than Google at every zoom.

 

 

 

Google, on average, labeled more roads than on nearly every zoom.

 

 

 

For two-thirds of zooms, both maps generally showed the same number of roads. For the remaining third, Apple almost always showed more roads.

 

 

 

Both maps, on average, labeled a similar number of places / points of interest—but had only 10% of their places in common on an average zoom.

 

 

 

Both maps also prioritized different kinds of places: Google Maps prioritized transit, while Apple prioritized landmarks. Apple also generally showed a greater number of place categories on a given zoom—and showed twice as many restaurants and shops as Google.

Google and Apple labeled very different things. On average, the two maps had only 24% of their labels in common at a given zoom. Surprisingly, the maps were most similar where they had the greatest choice in what to label.

 

 

 

Out of everything labeled on both maps, Google Maps and Apple Maps were most likely to label the same countries and least likely to label the same areas and neighborhoods within cities. On average, the maps had only 30% of their city labels in common and just 21% of their road labels.

 

 

 

Overall, Google Maps and Apple Maps generally had a similar number of labels. Across the 54 map pairs, Google averaged 28.2 labels, while Apple averaged 26.8—a difference of just 1.4 labels.

 

 

 

Despite having a similar number of labels overall, there were significant label count variations between the maps at many zoom-levels.

 

 

 

The large label count variations at many zooms were the result of prioritization differences between the two maps.

 

 

 

Google labeled roads more often and for more zooms than anything else on its maps. Apple labeled cities more often and for more zooms than anything else.

 

 

 

At the most zoomed in and zoomed out zoom-levels, Google was noticeably more detailed than Apple.