free geolocation geoip, are they viable?

Question

I'm trying to get a visitor's location based on their IP, pretty common stuff. My research so far shows that there's a database from MaxMind that costs $370 + $90/month... not the type of cost I can afford. Then there's a free version called GeoLite City.

Anyone used these before? Drop a quick line here please. Why is one free and the answer so expensive. Is the free one usable, is it not as accurate, what's the catch?

P.S. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

I'd imagine that the free ones are less accurate, contain less data and update less frequently. For some cases the quality of free database might be enough, for some case you need commercial higher quality database.

There is also hostip.info which is free, but I don't know about its quality.

Answer 2

The difference between a free DB and a one you have to pay for is generally :

• a matter of accuracy
  • about that, the only way to know whether a solution is OK for you or not is to test
• a matter of support
  • quite often, a free solution will not have much commercial support
  • but, as it's free, it might be used by more people -- which means you could get more community support (like on SO ^^ )

About Maxmind's database, quoting their website :

GeoLite City is similar to the GeoIP City database, but is less accurate.

And :

We are unable to offer direct support for GeoLite users.

And the Accuracy row in the table at the bottom of that page should interest you : they say the free version has an accuracy of 99.5% on a country level, and 79% on a city level, for the US, within 25 miles radius.
Up to you to decide if this is good enough for your needs / users.

Answer 3

You may test out the trial of database from IP2Location.com. It's not free but the data is accurate for those in trial version. You may also get some sample codes from the Website.