it now requires a subscription.

I think that's wrong. I only see a one-time payment on https://www.magicearth.com/pricing . 1 year fee of 6 Euro, then 15:

That said, they might shoot themselves in the foot with this. For those who don't know: The company's business model is or used to be to sell their services to car infotainment and similar industries. The free version for phones was their way to gather a big user base that contributes traffic and incident data.

Maybe their industry customer base collapsed. I don't know but with this move there is serious risk they're chasing away users and therefore the quality of the data decreases.

https://www.comaps.app/

I had just signed up via the mobile app a couple weeks ago for the free trial, renewing at $1/year thereafter. They sent several notifications (or emails, can't remember) about the price going up soon. Hopefully the old pricing will be honored unless cancelled.

I had been looking for a privacy-respecting alternative to Google Maps / Apple Maps that has real time traffic info. Hopefully, as @woelkchen@lemmy.world suggested, the quality of that data doesn't degrade too much due to chasing away users / their data sources.