What is Foursquare Places used for?

Foursquare Places supplies point-of-interest data for building map features, site selection, competitive research, and enriching business location databases.

Who should use Foursquare Places?

Developers, location analysts, marketers, and data teams in retail, real estate, travel, financial services, and navigation that need reliable place data.

How is Foursquare Places data delivered?

Foursquare Places is available through an API or as JSON, TSV, or Parquet files delivered to S3, Snowflake, Azure, GCP, or SFTP.

Is there a free version of Foursquare Places?

Foursquare Places offers FSQ OS Places, an open-source dataset with core attributes, while Pro and Premium tiers require contacting sales.

What are the best alternatives to Foursquare Places?

Common alternatives to Foursquare Places include Google Places API, SafeGraph, Overture Maps, and HERE Location Services for place and location data.

Foursquare Places Reviews, Features & Alternatives

Overview

What is Foursquare Places?

Foursquare Places is a point-of-interest dataset and API covering more than 100 million places in over 200 countries and territories. Each place carries 50+ attributes such as category, chain, hours, popularity, photos, and tips, built from machine learning, check-ins, and third-party sources. Developers use it to build maps and location features, while analysts and marketers use it for site selection, competitive research, and enriching their own place databases across retail, real estate, and travel.

Best for

App DevelopersLocation AnalystsReal Estate TeamsRetail StrategistsData Scientists

Product snapshot

Category: Data Discovery & Exploration
Best for: Global POI data
Deployment: Cloud
Free trial: Yes
Integrations: Snowflake, S3, Azure, GCP
AI features: Yes

Key features

Key features of Foursquare Places

Global place coverage

Search over 100 million places across 200+ countries and territories.

Rich place attributes

Use 50+ attributes including hours, chains, popularity, photos, and tips.

Places API access

Query place data in real time to power location-aware app features.

Flexible data delivery

Receive JSON, TSV, or Parquet files on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules.

Open source tier

Start with FSQ OS Places core attributes available through S3 access.

Store ID matching

Link transaction data to specific venues using the Store ID attribute.

Reviews

Foursquare Places reviews

Overall

Nobody has reviewed

What users like

Very large global place coverage
Detailed attributes for each venue
Several delivery formats and schedules
Open source core dataset available

What users dislike

Pro and Premium need sales contact
Usage-based pricing can be hard to forecast
Best value requires data engineering skills
Premium attributes cost extra

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Alternatives

Top Foursquare Places alternatives

Google Places API
Best for
App location search
Why choose it
Wide coverage and familiar developer tooling
SafeGraph
Best for
Places data for analysts
Why choose it
Detailed POI and building footprint datasets
Overture Maps
Best for
Open map data
Why choose it
Free open places data from industry partners
HERE Location Services
Best for
Enterprise mapping and navigation
Why choose it
Places search plus routing and geocoding

Integrations

Foursquare Places integrations

Foursquare Places is delivered where data teams already work. Bulk datasets can be sent to Amazon S3, SFTP, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Snowflake, and Azure Data Explorer, so analysts can join place records with their own tables in a warehouse. Files come as JSON, TSV, or Parquet on daily, weekly, or monthly refresh schedules, or as flat files. Developers who need live lookups can call the Places API to power search, autocomplete, and map features inside web and mobile apps. The open-source FSQ OS Places dataset is available through S3, which lets teams test core attributes before moving to the Pro or Premium tiers.

FAQ

Foursquare Places