Google recently (May 2025) changed their free tier to include 10,000 free Geocoding API calls per month ($50 value) down from 40,000 calls per month ($200 value). What happened is they went from a flat monthly $200 credit for all APIs to about $50 credit per API e.g. Places API, Nav SDK, GMPRO etc to encourage people to try out different APIs.

source: https://blog.afi.io/blog/a-practical-guide-to-the-google-geocoding-api/