Best Google Maps MCP server for Claude Code: a local list

The two calls

A places search needs coordinates, not a city name, so the first call converts one into the other. That is the geocode step, and it is the part people skip and then wonder why their query returns nothing useful. With the Actionway Skill installed, Claude Code makes both calls in a single turn: it geocodes the city, feeds the coordinates into the search, and hands back a table.

Austin resolved to 30.267153, -97.743061 — the formatted address came back as "Austin, TX, USA". That pair of numbers is what the search takes, along with the category and a radius in metres. We asked for 8,000 metres and got thirteen businesses, the furthest 7,159 metres out.

Each row also carries a place id, latitude and longitude, a category list, and a Google Maps link. That is the difference that matters for anything downstream: the agent can sort by distance, filter by rating, write a CSV, or drop the coordinates onto a map, because the numbers arrived as numbers. Nothing had to be parsed out of a page first.

The two things that went wrong

That is worth designing around rather than discovering later. If you want businesses that are open, run the search in their local business hours, not yours. If you want a list of businesses that exist, ignore the opening field entirely — it is a snapshot, not an attribute of the business. We nearly wrote a paragraph about Austin's pet groomers all being closed before checking what time it was where they are.

The second one is subtler. Three of our thirteen rows were the same chain — one at 797 metres rated 4.6, one at 3,116 metres rated 4.9, one at 3,570 metres rated 4.8. Three real branches, three real addresses, three different ratings. The instinct with a lead list is to deduplicate by name, and here that would have thrown away two locations and kept an arbitrary one. Deduplicate on place id, or on the address, and keep the branches.

Why this is not a scraper

"Google Maps scraper" is the phrase people search for, and it is worth being clear that this is a different thing. A scraper opens the map in a browser, scrolls the results panel, and reads text out of the page. It breaks when the layout changes, it trips bot detection, and the data arrives as strings that still have to be cleaned. The call above is a structured request that returns structured data, so there is no layout to break, no CAPTCHA to meet, and no cleaning step.

There is a practical consequence too. Because the rating and the distance come back as numbers rather than as text, "sort these by rating and drop anything under 4.5" is one more sentence to the agent rather than a parsing exercise. The list stays a list, and the agent's job stays the part it is good at — deciding what to do with it.

What it is actually good for

1. Building a prospect list

   A city plus a category is a lead list: name, address, rating, and a maps link per row. Ask for it as a CSV and the agent writes the file into your project.

2. Checking density before you commit

   How many of these already exist within a kilometre of an address? Geocode the address, search around it with a small radius, count the rows.

3. Filling in an address you half know

   Geocode on its own resolves a rough address to a formatted one with coordinates, which is the cheaper call of the two and often all you need.

4. Not for social platform locations

   A platform's own location tags are keyword records, not verified places. If you need a real address, this is the call; if you need what people tagged, that is a different question.

Set it up once

npm install --global @actionway/cli@latest
actionway init
mkdir -p "$HOME/.claude/skills"
cp -R "$HOME/.actionway/skill/actionway" "$HOME/.claude/skills/actionway"

You need Node.js 20 or newer and an Actionway account. There is also a Remote MCP route if you would rather not install anything locally — same calls, same prices, set up as a connector instead; the routes comparison covers what changes. Codex users copy the same folder into ~/.codex/skills/actionway, and the get started page lists the steps per client.

Maps calls sit next to the rest of the catalog on one balance, so the same session that builds a prospect list can also pull a company's financials or generate the artwork for whatever you send them. Every call is priced before it runs, and an empty wallet stops the job before anything is charged.