OSM is just a data base. People have made geocoding that uses the OSM database. You can install it yourself (e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim ) or use a hosted version ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines )

The advantage of OSM, is that if it's not returning the right data, you can fix it, and import it into your own hosted version.

It is not. Coverage is poor. At high zooms the main tiles at openstreetmap.org will show addresses, so you can go to a random place and see that there aren't any. Some areas are pretty complete (look at NYC), but there are many major cities with basically 0 addresses.

How accurate do you need? I have had great success in putting a proxy in place before your call out to Google to cache, remove addresses you don't think will geocode, and geocoding addresses you're happy with via free-sources first...

Have you tried the mapquest open data api? http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/geocoding-se...

Unfortunately it does not return the bounds of the matched feature. We use this to determine if results are accurate enough, by measuring the area of the bounds; for example, if the match is a long road (not a numbered street address), it makes no sense to use the latlng because it's quite obviously too imprecise; but if the road is quite short (less than 100m, say), it's acceptable to us. It's such an obvious feature to provide a geocoding API that I don't know why only Google does it.

Hey,

I'm one of the Geocod.io founders. I'm very interested in hearing about the features you're looking for and discuss data quality. Feel free to reach out here or at [email protected]

I've actually been in email contact with you before, back in March. Grep your mailbox for "Wild Bunch Sundance Crook".