Disclosure up front: I built basedonb. That makes this comparison biased by definition. I'm publishing the methodology and raw numbers below so you can audit it. If you find a mistake, comment and I'll edit. A reader asked: "Why would I use a third-party Maps scraper when Google has an official Places API?" It's a fair question. So I ran the same workload through both and wrote down what happened. TL;DR: They're not the same product. Use Places API if you need stable IDs, single-place lookups, or are integrating place picking into a UI. Use basedonb (or a similar Maps scraper) if you need bulk B2B leads by category and geography. Mixing them is also a valid strategy. Test setup Workload: 100 queries of "dentists in {city}, {state}" across the 50 most populous US metros, target 200 leads each → ~20,000 leads ceiling. Date: ran 2026-04-22 to 2026-04-24. Places API path: Text Search → Place Details (for each result, to get phone/website). basedonb path: single POST /scrapes per metro.…