How to: Get a Bing Maps Key
- 3 minutes to read
This document describes how to register a Bing Maps account and create a key to be able to use this map provider in your application.
Important
On May 21, 2024, Microsoft announced that Bing Maps for Enterprise and its API will be discontinued. Azure Maps will be a single unified enterprise mapping platform available from Microsoft.
We are working on API compatible with Azure Maps and expect to ship it with our next major release (v24.2).
If you have an existing license to Bing Maps for Enterprise, you can continue using our existing API. You need to transition to new API until June 30, 2025 (free and basic license) or until June 30, 2028 (enterprise license).
The last date you can get a new license to Bing Maps for Enterprise is June 30, 2025. If you do not have an existing license after that date, you would not be able to use our map controls with Bing Maps or Azure Maps (until we release the new API). During that time, you can use other map providers supported by our controls, such as OpenStreetMap.
If you connect your MapControl to Bing Maps using the BingMapDataProvider and don’t specify the valid Bing Maps key, you will get the following error:
“The specified Bing Maps key is invalid. To create a developer account, refer to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/create-a-bing-maps-key“
This error is shown in the image below.
The error message suggests visiting the official Microsoft web page devoted to Bing Maps. This page contains links to web resources, which are useful for map application developers. The page also suggests that you create a new account and get a developer key for it.
Open this web page in your favorite web browser:
On this page, click the Sign In button.
Note
You should have a Microsoft account to continue.
After that, you will need to login to your Microsoft account.
Fill in your account details and click Save.
Now you’ve registered a Bing Maps account and are ready to create a Bing Maps key for it. To do this, click My Keys.
- Now you should decide what Bing Maps key you require for your application. For more information on this, refer to the Getting a Bing Maps Key topic in MSDN, and also review Microsoft Bing Maps Platform APIs’ Terms of Use.
After you get your Bing Maps key, you should assign it to the BingMapDataProvider.BingKey property.
That’s all. For more information on using the Bing Maps service, please refer to the corresponding section in MSDN: Bing Maps.