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The 6 best Advan Research alternatives in 2026
Huq is our product. Here's how we compared everyone, including us.
Advan Research is a New York alternative-data company founded by former hedge fund and fintech people. It sells foot traffic and card-spend data to hedge funds, REITs and CRE teams, corporates and the public sector, through dashboards and raw datasets. In 2022 Advan Research acquired SafeGraph's Patterns business, and its Weekly Patterns+ dataset covers the US and Canada with history from January 2018.
Teams look elsewhere for a few reasons. One vendor-authored comparison describes Advan as built for analysts and quants rather than dashboard-first business users, with no public REST API documentation. Pricing isn't published. And teams with assets outside North America need another source.
Below we compare six alternatives on coverage, delivery, history and validation, with fair pros and cons for each, Huq included.
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Quick answer
For retail chains, retail property and investors or private equity, start with Huq, built to give the broadest set of location data across 35 markets. For US visitation APIs, Unacast. For a US-only dashboard, Placer.ai. For raw mobility files, Veraset.
Advan Research alternatives compared
What each provider is best for, where it covers and the level of detail it reports.
In this guide
How we evaluated
- Validation: published tests against ground truth or reported sales.
- Coverage: the US, Canada and any other markets in your portfolio.
- Delivery: dashboard, data files to your cloud, or API.
- Cadence and history: how often data updates and how far back it goes.
- Fit for your team: built for quant analysts, business users or both.
The best Advan Research alternatives for investors and CRE teams
1. Huq: best for branded retail chains, retail commercial property, and investors and private equity evaluating retail brands and assets.
Advan pairs US and Canadian foot traffic with US card spend for analysts and quants. Huq is built to give you the broadest set of location data across 35 markets, which suits funds and private equity teams evaluating retail brands and retail assets in more than one country. Footfall comes by week, month and year, with total and average daily foot traffic, trends and period-on-period change. Brand analysis and industry performance show how a chain or category is trading, and shopping center and retail center types frame asset-level comparisons.
For individual assets, Huq reports visiting versus passing traffic, residents versus visitors, catchment and drive-time analysis, footfall density and transportation mode. Behavior data covers visit frequency, dwell time, time of day, cross-visitation and international visitation for tourism, alongside POIs and brand locations. Demographics (age, gender, purchasing power) and geo-spend by volume and category are available in selected markets. Data refreshes weekly, and Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each market twice a year. In Huq's own validation study, its visit data tracked Walmart's quarterly US net sales with 0.85 correlation and 3.8% error. Quant teams take Parquet and CSV feeds into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage; deal teams use the Explore map, Projects, Excel exports and monthly PDF location reports.
Pros
- Built to give the broadest set of location data in one platform, from footfall and catchment to behavior, density, brands and industries
- Brand analysis and industry performance across 35 markets for funds evaluating retail brands and assets
- 35 markets, with more than 1,000 locations manually validated in each market twice a year
- Straightforward for commercial teams and analysts alike, with the Explore map, Projects and monthly PDF location reports
- Technical teams get Parquet and CSV data feeds into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage
Cons
- Newer to the US than US-native vendors such as Placer.ai and Advan
- Demographics and spend are available in selected markets only, so check availability for each market you need
- Delivers data feeds (Parquet and CSV into S3 or GCS) rather than an API, so teams wanting on-demand API calls work from files instead
2. Placer.ai: best for US teams that want a mature foot traffic dashboard with API access.
Placer.ai (Placer Labs Inc.) is a US foot traffic analytics platform, tagline "Market Intelligence for the Physical World", with 4,000+ customers across retail, commercial real estate, local government, CPG, restaurants, finance and advertising. It estimates visits to places, chains, markets and regions from a panel of tens of millions of mobile devices, using property-level polygons, and says its correlations with first-party sources consistently exceed 90% (a vendor claim). Teams work in a SaaS dashboard that exports CSV, PDF and SHP files, or take data through an API and feeds via Snowflake and AWS. A Data Marketplace adds partner datasets such as sales estimates, demographics and consumer expenditure. Coverage is the United States only.
Advan is built for analysts and quants; Placer.ai is built for business users who want a dashboard, with an API and feeds for data teams. It doesn't pair visits with its own card spend data the way Advan does, though its Data Marketplace adds partner datasets. Placer.ai covers the US only. Huq covers 35 markets in one platform, with weekly footfall, catchment and cross-visitation built for retail chains, retail property and investors.
Pros
- 4,000+ customers and a mature US dashboard
- Dashboard, API and data feeds through Snowflake and AWS
- Data Marketplace bundles demographics, business counts and consumer expenditure
- Free tools and a freemium version to try before you buy
Cons
- Covers the US only
- Locations with fewer than 50 unique devices are not shown, which limits low-traffic sites
- Pricing is a custom subscription; one Capterra reviewer calls it "expensive but worth the cost"
- A Capterra reviewer notes not all data has been input for all centers or stores
3. Unacast: best for data teams that want US visitation datasets and analytics APIs.
Unacast is a location data company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, with Norwegian roots, and the parent of Gravy Analytics since their late-2023 merger. It sells global mobility data, US foot traffic data, consumer data enrichment and data linkages to adtech, martech, software, real estate, retail and government teams. Its visitation datasets cover weekly, monthly and quarterly foot traffic, dynamic trade areas, cross-visitation and visitation patterns, with US history from October 2018 and a weekly release with a 4-day lag. Analytics APIs include Area Visitors, Observations, Trade Areas and Personas, and bulk data can be scheduled into a warehouse, lake or S3. Foot traffic datasets cover the US; raw mobility feeds are listed for 247 countries.
Advan and Unacast are both data-first, but Unacast leans toward APIs for software and adtech teams while Advan leans toward investors. Unacast's dynamic trade area and cross-visitation datasets cover ground Advan's Patterns+ doesn't. The FTC finalized an order on Gravy Analytics, now a Unacast subsidiary, in January 2025, so ask how it affects the data you buy. Huq covers 35 markets, refreshed weekly, through a self-serve platform and Parquet or CSV feeds.
Pros
- US visitation history from October 2018
- Weekly release with a 4-day lag
- Analytics APIs for visitors, trade areas and personas
- Cross visitation and dynamic trade area datasets
Cons
- Visitation datasets cover the US only
- Data- and API-first, so visualization and site evaluation sit with your team
- Its subsidiary Gravy Analytics is under a January 2025 FTC order, which compliance teams may want to review
- G2 reviewers mention a learning curve with large data sizes
4. pass_by: best for analysts who want daily-delivered US retail visit feeds in Snowflake, BigQuery or Databricks.
pass_by (Passby Technologies Ltd) is a London-based retail market intelligence company. Its Almanac platform brings brand, market, spend and trip insights into one view, AI Retail Agents put the same data into AI assistants, and Feeds & API delivers the signals into customers' own tools. Its US visit data covers about 93% of branded retail points of interest: 1.31M POIs across 7,080 brands, 292 retail categories and 687 stock tickers. Visit counts are aggregated daily at POI level, with history from January 2019 and 90-day visit forecasts updated monthly. Delivery options include S3, SFTP, Snowflake, BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, Databricks and a REST API. pass_by self-reports correlation to actual traffic of 86% daily, 80% weekly and 88% monthly.
pass_by competes with Advan on investor and brand-benchmarking work: both map visits to tickers, and pass_by adds 90-day forecasts and a wide choice of delivery channels. Advan pairs visits with its own card spend data, while pass_by's Almanac includes spend insights. Huq differs by covering 35 markets in one platform, with weekly footfall, catchment and cross-visitation for retail chains, retail property and investors.
Pros
- Visit data for about 93% of US branded retail POIs (1.31M POIs, 7,080 brands)
- Delivery into S3, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks or by API
- US history from January 2019
- Platform, AI agents and feeds from one provider
Cons
- Coverage centers on branded retail, so other property types may be thinner
- Its 94% correlation to ground truth is self-reported
- Its homepage doesn't list the countries it covers
5. Veraset: best for quant teams that want raw mobility data to build their own signals.
Veraset is a raw mobility data provider for data science and engineering teams. Its products are Movement, a global dataset of GPS pings; Visits, device visits to 4M+ POIs with dwell; Home & Work, inferred residence and workplace locations; Trips, origin-destination journeys covering 100M+ trips a month; and MATCHLINK, which links devices to emails, IP addresses and households. Veraset cites about 300M devices and 10 billion daily pings across 200+ countries. Data is pushed as flat files to S3 or GCP or accessed through APIs, and in March 2026 it launched Orchestrator, a self-serve platform for location workflows. Buyers span adtech, finance, real estate, retail, urban planning, government and research.
Veraset is an Advan alternative for quant and data science teams that want to build their own visit models from rawer inputs rather than buy processed Patterns+ datasets. It doesn't bundle card spend or ticker mapping. Huq sits at the other end: aggregated weekly foot traffic, catchment and cross-visitation across 35 markets, ready to use in a platform or as Parquet or CSV feeds into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage.
Pros
- Wide range of datasets: movement, visits with dwell, home and work, and trips
- Flat-file delivery to S3 or GCP, plus APIs
- Orchestrator self-serve platform, launched March 2026
- Publishes its sensitive-location removal and supplier consent criteria
Cons
- Raw data, so your team builds the analysis and reporting
- Device and country figures are vendor claims
- Prospects must state a use case, which Veraset reviews before granting data access
6. Echo Analytics: best for data teams that want footfall and catchment files for Europe and the US.
Echo Analytics is a geospatial data provider that sells location datasets rather than a dashboard. Its core products are Places, POI data on 80M+ locations worldwide, and Shapes, building footprints for commercial locations with 95%+ polygon coverage. Its insight datasets cover Footfall, Catchment Area, Cross-visitation, GeoPersona and Travel Patterns, and it also offers a Location SDK and geolocation APIs. Coverage varies by product: its Datarade listings span Europe and the US, from 5 to 33 countries depending on the dataset. Echo sells to retail, adtech and martech, FMCG, consulting and market research teams. It offers free data samples and public documentation, and works with partners such as CARTO and Esri for teams that want to map the data.
Echo is an Advan alternative for teams that need datasets beyond the US and Canada, especially in Europe, and want POIs and building shapes alongside footfall. It doesn't offer card spend or ticker mapping. Huq covers 35 markets with weekly footfall, catchment, dwell and cross-visitation in one platform, plus Parquet or CSV feeds into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage for technical teams.
Pros
- Footfall, catchment and cross-visitation datasets from one provider
- 80M+ locations with 95%+ polygon coverage claimed
- Free data sample before you commit
- Merges with your own data while keeping your taxonomies
Cons
- No built-in visualization; Echo relies on partner tools
- Country coverage varies by product, from 5 to 33 countries on Datarade
- Its homepage doesn't state a data refresh schedule
How to choose an Advan Research alternative
Are you replacing SafeGraph Patterns data?
Advan inherited Patterns, so check that any replacement offers comparable POI-level weekly visits and enough history for your models.
Who will use the data?
Quant teams usually want files in their cloud. Asset managers and leasing teams often want a dashboard. Some providers offer both.
How is accuracy proven?
Ask for validation against reported sales or door counts, and check which country each test covers before applying it to your holdings.
Do you need markets beyond North America?
Weekly Patterns+ covers the US and Canada. If you track European or Middle Eastern assets, you'll need a provider that measures those markets too.
Frequently asked questions
Is Advan Research the same as SafeGraph?
No. They are separate companies. Advan Research acquired SafeGraph's Patterns business, including Weekly, Monthly and Neighborhood Patterns, in November 2022. SafeGraph retired Patterns at the start of 2023 and now focuses on places, geometry, address and US spend data. Advan sells the successor datasets as Weekly Patterns+ and Neighborhood Patterns+.
What data does Advan Research sell?
Advan sells foot traffic and consumer spend data through FIT, REI, REVEAL, SpendView and the Patterns+ datasets, plus migration, ticker, CMBS and cities data. Weekly Patterns+ has POI-level weekly visits from January 2018 for the US and Canada. SpendView is built from 120M+ cards and covers the US only.
What is the best Advan Research alternative for hedge funds?
For funds evaluating retail brands and assets, Huq offers footfall by week, month and year, residents vs visitors, catchment, drive time, frequency, dwell, dayparts, cross-visitation, tourism, density, transport mode, POIs, brands, industries, plus demographics and spend in selected markets, across 35 markets, with Excel exports and Parquet or CSV feeds into S3 or GCS. Unacast suits US visitation APIs; Veraset suits raw mobility files.
Does Advan Research cover markets outside the US?
Weekly Patterns+ covers the US and Canada and SpendView the US only, per Advan's data dictionaries, and its About page describes a US focus. Huq offers footfall by week, month and year, residents vs visitors, catchment, drive time, frequency, dwell, dayparts, cross-visitation, tourism, density, transport mode, POIs, brands, industries, plus demographics and spend in selected markets across 35 markets, including the US.
How does Huq validate its foot traffic data?
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, aiming to provide the most reliable and transparent location dataset globally. That validation underpins its footfall, catchment, behavior, density, brand and industry data, and demographics and spend in selected markets. Ask Huq for results in your markets.
How often is Huq data updated?
Huq data refreshes weekly. That covers footfall by week, month and year, residents vs visitors, catchment, drive time, behavior, cross-visitation, tourism, density, transport mode, POIs, brands and industries, plus demographics and spend in selected markets. Use the Explore map, exports, monthly PDF reports, or Parquet and CSV feeds into S3 or GCS.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoSources
- Huq: Walmart sales validation study
- Advan Research
- Advan Research: About
- Advan Research: data dictionaries
- Advan Research: SafeGraph Patterns acquisition
- Advan Research: 2020 coverage release
- SafeGraph: Weekly Patterns retirement
- GrowthFactor: foot traffic provider comparison (vendor-authored)
- Placer.ai
- Placer.ai: FAQ
- Unacast
- Unacast: visitation datasets
- FTC: final order against Gravy Analytics (Jan 2025)
- pass_by
- Datarade: pass_by US visit data
- Veraset
- Echo Analytics
- Datarade: Echo Analytics foot traffic
- Placer.ai: pricing
- TechCrunch: Placer.ai raises $75M (Aug 2024)
- Capterra: Placer.ai reviews
- Unacast: About
- Unacast: foot traffic data
- Business Wire: Unacast $28M financing (Dec 2025)
- G2: Placer.ai vs Unacast
- pass_by: Placer.ai alternatives (self-reported figures)
- Placer.ai data delivery methods
- Unacast global data (Datarade)
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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