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Acorn groups explained, and the 8 best CACI Acorn alternatives (2026)
Huq is our product. Here's how we compared everyone, including us.
Acorn groups are CACI's way of sorting every UK postcode by the type of people who live there. More than 1.6 million postcodes are coded, across 7 categories and 22 groups, built from over 800 variables. Many people searching Acorn data just want to look up their own postcode, and CACI's Try Acorn tool is the place to do that.
This guide is for the other searchers: retail expansion, property and investment teams, and councils and BIDs, deciding whether Acorn segmentation, other CACI data such as Retail Footprint and its footfall data, or something else answers their question. Acorn describes residents, not visits. CACI sells footfall data separately, built from Acorn-coded mobile phone data, off the shelf for common locations or as bespoke studies. It is a segmentation and consultancy-led business.
Huq wrote this guide and lists itself first. It is the only self-serve platform here built for retail, real estate, councils and BIDs. The other seven are what they mainly are: another household segmentation, a consultancy, telco network data, GIS toolkits and occupancy research. We describe each using only facts the vendors publish.
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Quick answer
Huq is the self-serve choice for retail expansion, retail property and investors, and councils and BIDs: observed weekly footfall at any UK address, with accuracy published as MAPE. If you only want another household segmentation, Experian Mosaic is the like-for-like swap. Consultancies and raw network data suit narrower jobs.
CACI Acorn alternatives at a glance
How the eight options compare on audience, coverage, data and granularity.
In this guide
How we evaluated
- Question answered: who lives near a site (classification) or who actually visits it (observed footfall).
- Self-serve use: whether commercial, property and council teams can answer questions themselves, without consultants, GIS specialists or data scientists.
- Published accuracy: whether the vendor publishes how accurate its footfall is, by country, against a real benchmark.
- Granularity: household, postcode, area, hex or any address you draw.
- Freshness: annual updates suit classifications; trading and policy decisions need weekly or monthly data.
- Coverage across markets: UK high streets, shopping centres and retail parks, plus the same measures abroad if you trade there.
- Fit for councils and BIDs: benchmarking a town against comparable places and measuring whether interventions work.
The 8 best alternatives to Acorn groups and CACI data
1. Huq: best for retail expansion, retail property and investors, and councils and BIDs
Acorn tells you who lives in a postcode. Huq shows how a place is actually visited: how many people come, from which postcodes, when and for how long. CACI also sells footfall data, from Acorn-coded mobile phone data, but its footfall page doesn't publish a refresh schedule or accuracy figures. Huq publishes both.
Huq is the self-serve location intelligence platform for three groups: retail chains planning expansion and site selection, from global brands to teams with five stores; retail and commercial real estate owners, asset managers, investors and private equity assessing retail brands and assets; and local councils and BIDs tracking economic development and regeneration, and checking whether policies, events and interventions are working against comparable places. Teams answer their own questions in the Explore map, Projects and portfolio dashboards. No consultant or GIS team is needed.
Accuracy comes first. Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, uses one uniform method in every market, and publishes accuracy by country as MAPE against landlord-reported footfall: 18.7% in Great Britain, 13.5% in Germany, its best market, and 19.5% across published markets. Under 30% is considered healthy. Data refreshes weekly.
In one platform you get footfall by week, month and year (totals, average daily footfall, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic); residents and visitors; catchment by postcode with drive-time and travel-time analysis; demographics and profiling (age, gender, purchasing power); visit frequency, dwell time, dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs and international visitation; footfall density and transportation mode; points of interest, brand locations and industry performance; and geo-spend by volume and category for UK locations via Experian. It works on any UK address, including high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened.
Commercial teams work in the Explore map, run White Space Analysis and use Projects to monitor many sites and report to stakeholders. Technical teams get CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and Parquet and CSV data feeds into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Huq delivers feeds, not an API.
Clients include the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung, among more than 300 organisations, and Huq's NPS is 42. JD Sports reports 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk. Ripon BID uses Huq and saw footfall up 164% year on year.
Pros
- Self-serve: retail, property and council teams answer their own questions without a consultant or GIS team
- Accuracy published by country as MAPE, with 1,000+ locations validated in every market twice a year
- One uniform method across 35 markets, on any address, including competitors' stores and unopened sites
- Footfall, catchment, behaviour, demographics and UK geo-spend via Experian in one place
- Weekly data, with exports, PDF reports and data feeds into S3 or Google Cloud Storage
Cons
- Not a household classification: it won't give you an Acorn type for a postcode
- No sales forecasts: pair Huq data with your own model
2. Experian Mosaic: best for marketers who want a second household segmentation for campaign targeting
Mosaic is Experian's UK consumer classification. It sorts the UK population into 18 groups and 68 types, built from more than 900 data points, mostly at household level. Like Acorn, it describes who lives in an area, not who visits a site. Mobility and spend sit in separate overlays, and it is designed for activation in marketing platforms rather than for site or place analysis.
Pros
- Household-level inputs, with no reliance on census data
- Built for marketing activation
Cons
- Describes residents, not visits to a specific site
- Mobility and spend are separate overlays
- Pricing and formats aren't published
3. Geolytix: best for grocers and multiples that want to commission a bespoke sales forecast
Geolytix is a UK location planning consultancy. It sells MAPP, an online mapping tool, GEODATA datasets, and consultancy for sales forecasting, network strategy and investment models. Its Small Area Footfall product blends mobility data with survey data and ground truthing to estimate average daily footfall in 20m hexes across UK Retail Places. The work is consultant-led: you commission a model rather than answer questions yourself, and the footfall update schedule and delivery format aren't published.
Pros
- Forecasting and network strategy consultancy
- Demographics, footfall estimates and retail-place data from one supplier
Cons
- Consultancy-led, so projects take time
- Footfall update cadence and delivery format aren't published
- Footfall figures are modelled estimates
4. BT Active Intelligence: best for transport and events teams that want UK network data at area level
BT Active Intelligence is BT Business's mobility data service, built from aggregated, anonymised data on the EE network and scaled to the UK population. It sells four products: Location, Journey, Origin destination and Audience insights, through an on-demand portal or as requested outputs. It is telco data for area-level questions about towns, travel and events. Outputs are area-based, so check the geography before relying on it for a single shop unit.
Pros
- Footfall, journeys and origin–destination from one network
- Age and gender breakdowns
Cons
- Area-based outputs, not brand or store benchmarks
- UK only
5. O2 Motion (Virgin Media O2 Business): best for public-sector analysts studying movement trends between districts
O2 Motion is Virgin Media O2 Business's anonymised, aggregated mobile network data. It relies on connection data between devices and phone masts, and the data on the ONS platform refreshes weekly. It is raw movement data for public bodies and analysts studying how people move between districts. Mast-based data describes areas, so check whether it can isolate the individual site you care about.
Pros
- Weekly refresh on the ONS platform
- Covers movement across districts
Cons
- Area-level data from mast connections
- Little published detail on retail-specific outputs
- UK only
6. Esri ArcGIS Business Analyst: best for GIS teams drawing trade areas in a mapping toolkit
ArcGIS Business Analyst is Esri's market analysis software. It bundles demographic, business, lifestyle and spending data with tools for consumer profiling, drive times and trade-area rings, on desktop, web or mobile. It is a GIS toolkit: you need people who know ArcGIS to get value from it, and on its own it doesn't tell you how many people visit a site. Its product page doesn't spell out UK datasets, so confirm what your licence includes.
Pros
- Trade areas, drive times and profiling in one tool
- Data for more than 170 countries
Cons
- Needs GIS skills to get the most from it
- No observed visit data on its own
- UK data specifics need confirming with Esri
7. Local Data Company (Green Street): best for property teams tracking shop occupancy and vacancy in Great Britain
Local Data Company, owned by Green Street, tracks Great Britain's retail and leisure premises using field researchers. It records occupancy, vacancy, openings and closures across high streets, shopping centres and retail parks, with mapping and KPIs in its LocalDataOnline tool. It describes supply, not demand: LDC does not measure footfall, so you still need visit data to judge trading performance.
Pros
- Field-verified occupancy and vacancy
- History of openings and closures
Cons
- No footfall or visit data
- Great Britain only
8. CARTO: best for data teams that want to build their own models inside a cloud warehouse
CARTO is a cloud-native spatial analytics platform that runs inside BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks and Oracle. Its Data Observatory offers third-party datasets, including points of interest, demographics and mobility, to join with your own data. It is a toolkit, not a data source: you license the underlying data separately and need analysts or GIS experts to set it up and build site scoring models.
Pros
- Works inside your existing cloud warehouse
- Flexible for custom models
Cons
- Needs analysts or GIS experts to set up
- You still license the underlying data
- Plan for analyst time before the first answer
How to choose a CACI Acorn alternative
Do you need residents or visitors?
Acorn categories and other household segmentations describe who lives in a postcode. If you need to know who comes to a store, centre or high street, you need observed footfall. Huq measures it at any UK address and publishes its accuracy.
Will your team answer its own questions?
Consultancies and GIS toolkits put a specialist between you and the answer. Huq is self-serve: expansion, property and council teams work in the Explore map and Projects themselves.
How often does the answer change?
CACI updates Acorn annually. Store trading, events, competitor openings and council interventions move week to week, and Huq refreshes weekly.
Can you trust the numbers?
Ask each supplier for accuracy by country. Huq publishes MAPE against landlord-reported footfall: 18.7% in Great Britain.
Do you need to compare places?
Councils and BIDs need to benchmark a town against comparable places. Huq uses one method across 35 markets, so comparisons hold.
Frequently asked questions
What are Acorn groups?
Acorn is CACI's geodemographic segmentation of the UK. It sorts every postcode into 7 categories and 22 groups, using over 800 variables and more than one billion data points. Each group describes the typical residents of a postcode, such as Commuter-Belt Wealth or Up-and-Coming Urbanites, to help with targeting and planning.
How can I find out my Acorn classification?
Use CACI's Try Acorn tool at acorn.caci.co.uk. You register, verify your email, log in, choose 'By Postcode' and enter your postcode. Your Acorn category appears at the top left of the results. Some universities ask for this when looking at contextual admissions.
What is CACI data?
CACI Ltd is a London data and technology company, a UK subsidiary of US-based CACI International. Its location data includes Acorn, Retail Footprint, a spatial interaction model of more than 70,000 retail locations in the UK and Europe, and Acorn-coded footfall data, sold as data, software and consultancy.
How often is Huq's data updated?
Huq's data refreshes weekly. Huq also manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year and publishes an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall. By comparison, CACI updates the Acorn classification annually.
Which UK locations does Huq cover?
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, town centres, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. You don't need counters, sensors or cameras, and you can draw any area on the Explore map.
Can I get a free analysis from Huq?
Yes. Send Huq a few UK sites, such as stores, a shopping centre or a high street, and the team will prepare a free analysis of their footfall, catchment and visitor profile. It's a quick way to see what observed visit data adds to your Acorn profiles.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoSources
- Huq
- CACI: Acorn
- CACI: location intelligence
- CACI: footfall data
- CACI: Retail Footprint
- GOV.UK: Acorn consumer classification (CACI)
- Durham University: finding your Acorn score
- Wikipedia: CACI
- Experian Mosaic
- Geolytix
- Geolytix: Small Area Footfall
- BT Active Intelligence
- Virgin Media O2: O2 Motion footfall
- ISPreview: ONS picks Virgin Media O2 Business
- The Industry: CACI and O2 Motion footfall analysis
- Esri ArcGIS Business Analyst
- Local Data Company
- Business Wire: Green Street acquires LDC
- CARTO: site selection
About Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
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