Most apps reaching for Google Maps don't need driving directions or turn-by-turn nav. They need a city picker, a location filter, maybe a "near me" search. But once you're in the Maps ecosystem, you're paying geocoding prices for a dropdown.
Tova is a focused city data API — 56,000 cities, <200ms responses, REST/JSON. 1,000 free test requests.
Example code for JS, React, Vue, Next.js, Node, Python, and .NET: github.com/orgs/TovaApis/repositories