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The 10 best location data providers in the US (2026)
Huq is our product. Here's how we compared everyone, including us.
Location data providers sell information about places and how people use them: visit and foot traffic counts, raw movement records, and points of interest (POI) such as store names and addresses. This list covers the providers US buyers use for store, site and market decisions, not maps or geocoding.
Good providers differ on five things: whether they publish accuracy validation, which countries they cover, how often data updates, how it's delivered (dashboard, files or API) and how much work your team must do before it's useful. Buyers include retailers, real estate teams, investors, data science teams and adtech companies.
We ranked ten providers on those criteria. Huq wrote this page and ranks itself first: it's built to give you the broadest set of location data across 35 markets, from footfall and catchment to behavior, brands and industries, and it manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each market twice a year. Every provider, Huq included, gets fair pros and cons, and every fact links to its source.
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Quick answer
Huq is our pick for retail chains, retail property and investors who want the broadest set of location data across 35 markets. Advan suits hedge funds pairing visits with card spend, Veraset suits data science teams, and Foursquare suits developers needing POI data.
Location data providers compared
A side-by-side view of what each provider sells, where it covers and the level of detail it reports.
In this guide
How we evaluated
- Accuracy validation: whether the provider publishes tests against ground truth, and for which country.
- Coverage: the US and any other markets you need, and which location types are included.
- Cadence and history: how often data updates and how far back it goes.
- Delivery: dashboard, data files, API or warehouse share, and what your team has to build.
- Ease of use: whether business users can get answers without data engineers or GIS skills.
The 10 best location data providers for US buyers
1. Huq: best for branded retail chains, retail commercial property, and investors and private equity evaluating retail brands and assets
Huq is a location data provider and platform, founded in London in 2014 and used by 300+ organizations. It's built to give you the broadest set of location data across 35 markets, the US included, from one source. Footfall comes by week, month and year: total and average daily foot traffic, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting versus passing traffic. Alongside it you get residents versus visitors, catchment and drive-time analysis, and visitor behavior, covering visit frequency, dwell time, time of day, cross-visitation and international visitation for tourism. Huq also measures footfall density and transportation mode, and adds POIs, brand locations, brand analysis, industry performance, and shopping center and retail center types. Demographics (age, gender, purchasing power) and geo-spend by volume and category are available in selected markets.
For a data buyer, delivery matters as much as breadth. Technical teams take data feeds: Parquet and CSV files delivered into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets, ready to load into a warehouse or BI tool. Commercial teams use the same data in the Explore map and Projects, with CSV and Excel exports and monthly PDF location reports. Data refreshes weekly, and Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each market twice a year. As supporting evidence, Huq's own validation study found its visit data tracked Walmart's quarterly US net sales with 0.85 correlation and 3.8% error.
Pros
- Built to give the broadest set of location data from one provider, from footfall and catchment to behavior, density, brands and industries
- 35 markets measured the same way, so US and international locations compare directly
- More than 1,000 locations manually validated in each market twice a year
- Parquet and CSV data feeds into S3 or GCS for data teams, plus a platform for business users on the same numbers
- No hardware, sensors or cameras needed, so you can analyze any address, including competitor sites
Cons
- Newer to the US than US-native vendors such as Placer.ai and Advan
- Demographics and geo-spend are available in selected markets only, so check availability for each market you buy
- Delivers data feeds rather than an API, so teams wanting on-demand API calls work from files in S3 or GCS instead
2. Placer.ai: best for US-only teams that want a mature foot traffic dashboard
Placer.ai (Placer Labs Inc.) is a US foot traffic analytics company with 4,000+ customers across retail, commercial real estate, local government, CPG, restaurants, finance and advertising. It estimates visits from a mobile location panel of tens of millions of devices and uses machine learning to extrapolate them to properties, chains, markets and regions, drawn on property-level polygons. Teams work in the analytics dashboard, with CSV, PDF and SHP exports, call the API, or take data feeds through the Placer Marketplace, Snowflake and AWS. A Data Marketplace layers on partner datasets such as sales estimates, demographics, business counts and consumer expenditure. Coverage is the United States only.
Placer belongs on a location data providers list because its visit estimates can be bought as data, not just viewed: the API and Snowflake and AWS feeds put the same numbers into your own models. A freemium version and free tools such as Chain Analysis let you look before you buy. Next to Huq, the difference is scope. Placer goes deep on one country, while Huq is built to give one weekly dataset, delivered as Parquet or CSV feeds, across 35 markets.
Pros
- Large US user base: more than 4,000 customers across retail, real estate, CPG and civic bodies
- Dashboard, API and data feeds (Snowflake, AWS) from one vendor
- Data Marketplace bundles partner datasets such as sales estimates and demographics
- Free tools such as Chain Analysis and the Placer 100, plus a freemium version
Cons
- Covers the US only, so sites in other countries need a second provider
- Locations with fewer than 50 unique devices aren't shown, which can leave gaps at small or low-traffic sites
- Its "+92% accuracy" homepage claim comes without a published method
- Pricing isn't published; one Capterra reviewer calls it "expensive but worth the cost"
3. Advan Research: best for hedge funds and quant teams pairing US visits with card spend
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 and institutional investors, REITs, corporates and the public sector. After buying SafeGraph's Patterns business in November 2022, its Weekly Patterns+ dataset became the successor to SafeGraph Patterns: POI-level visits for each Monday-to-Sunday week across the US and Canada, delivered on Wednesdays, with history from January 2018. Neighborhood Patterns+ reports at census block group level, and SpendView adds weekly US consumer spend. Raw files ship by FTP, AWS S3 and Google Cloud, and the FIT, REI and REVEAL dashboards serve people who prefer a screen.
Advan earns its place among location data providers because it sells the files themselves, with long history in a format many existing models were built on, plus card spend from 120M+ cards. Advan says its panel covers 45M US and 65M global devices. Choose it when quant or alternative-data teams need US visits and spend side by side. Huq suits teams that want footfall, catchment and behavior across 35 markets in a self-serve platform, with Parquet or CSV feeds for technical teams.
Pros
- Weekly Patterns+ history back to January 2018, useful for long-run trend models
- Pairs foot traffic with card-spend data from 120M+ cards (SpendView)
- Sells both raw datasets and dashboards (FIT, REI, REVEAL)
- Successor to SafeGraph Patterns, which many existing models were built on
Cons
- Foot traffic covers the US and Canada only, and spend data is US only
- Built mainly for analysts and quant teams rather than store or leasing teams
- Delivery is via FTP, AWS S3 and Google Cloud; Snowflake isn't listed on its site
- Pricing isn't published, so you'll need a demo or call
4. Unacast: best for data and adtech teams buying mobility data through APIs
Unacast is a location data company headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, with Norwegian roots, and it merged with Gravy Analytics in late 2023. It sells global mobility data, US foot traffic data, consumer data enrichment and data linkages that connect mobile ad IDs to hashed emails and IPs. The Area Visitors, Observations, Trade Areas and Personas APIs serve product and data teams, and bulk data can be scheduled into a warehouse or data lake. US visitation datasets cover weekly, monthly and quarterly foot traffic, dynamic trade areas and cross-visitation, built from origin ZIP code and census block group. In December 2025 Unacast raised $28M from Vector Capital.
Unacast fits this list as a data supplier first: US visitation is released weekly with a 4-day lag, history runs from October 2018, and raw mobility data is sold globally. In January 2025 the FTC finalized an order restricting how Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel can use sensitive location data, which buyers may want to raise in due diligence. Unacast suits teams embedding data in their own products. Huq suits teams that want analysis-ready footfall across 35 markets, in a platform or as files.
Pros
- Four analytics APIs for teams building location data into their own products
- US visitation history from October 2018, released weekly with a 4-day lag
- Cross-visitation and dynamic trade area datasets ready to use
- Scheduled bulk delivery into your warehouse or data lake
Cons
- Foot traffic datasets cover the US; only raw mobility data is global
- Data and API-first, so dashboards and site analysis are largely up to you
- The FTC's January 2025 final order against Gravy Analytics and a January 2025 Gravy data breach are worth raising in due diligence
5. Veraset: best for data science teams that want raw movement files to model themselves
Veraset is a raw mobility data provider for teams that build their own models. Its datasets are Movement (device-level and aggregated location pings), Visits (device visits to 4M+ points of interest, with dwell), Home & Work (inferred home and work locations), Trips (origin-destination journeys) and MATCHLINK, which links devices to emails, IPs and households. Veraset cites about 300 million devices, around 10 billion location pings a day and coverage in 200+ countries. Files are delivered to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud, or by API, and its Orchestrator tool adds a self-serve way to run location workflows. Buyers span advertising, retail, financial services, real estate, transportation, government and academic research.
Veraset belongs among location data providers because it sells the rawest form of the data: pings and visit records you aggregate, validate and model yourself. It says it is GDPR and CCPA adherent and removes US observations at healthcare facilities, schools and places of worship before building products. That makes it a fit for data science teams with engineering capacity. Huq sits at the other end, delivering aggregated weekly footfall, catchment and dwell metrics, either in its platform or as Parquet or CSV files.
Pros
- Global scale claim: about 300 million devices in 200+ countries
- Raw Movement data plus processed Visits, Trips and Home & Work datasets from one vendor
- Flat files to S3 or GCP, APIs, and the Orchestrator self-serve tool
- Says it removes US observations at healthcare facilities, schools and places of worship
Cons
- Sells data, not an analysis dashboard, so you'll need data engineers and analysts to turn files into answers
- Device and country figures are vendor claims without published accuracy validation
- Identity-linking products such as MATCHLINK need careful privacy and legal review
6. Foursquare: best for developers who need global POI data through a Places API
Foursquare is a places (POI) data company. Its Places data covers 100M+ points of interest across 200+ countries and territories, with 1,100+ venue categories, built with machine learning from 16B+ user check-ins, third-party data, web crawls and superuser validation. It comes as free, open source FSQ OS Places, Places Pro, and Places Premium, which adds attributes such as popular hours, photos and reviews. Paid tiers ship as JSON, TSV or Parquet via S3, SFTP, Azure, GCP or Snowflake, or through the Places API. Foursquare also sells Attribution and Audience products, and its customers include Redfin, Nextdoor and AB InBev.
Foursquare is here because places data is one of the three core kinds of location data, alongside mobility and visits, and its open source places data supplies POIs inside Esri Business Analyst. In September 2026 ad tech company Infillion announced it would acquire Foursquare, which is expected to keep selling data to third parties for now. Use Foursquare to answer what is where. Use Huq to answer how many people visit those places, how long they stay and where they come from.
Pros
- 100M+ POIs in 200+ countries and territories, with 1,100+ categories
- Free open source tier, with Pro and Premium tiers for richer attributes
- Flexible delivery: Places API, Snowflake, S3, SFTP, Azure or GCP
- 550+ partner integrations, including POIs inside Esri Business Analyst
Cons
- Its core product is places data, not visit counts for judging site performance
- The announced Infillion acquisition hasn't closed and terms weren't disclosed, so check how it could affect roadmap and data licensing
7. SafeGraph: best for analysts who need POI, building footprint and address data
SafeGraph is a places data provider that positions itself as the source of truth for POI data, selling to data science teams, software companies, retail, finance and CPG. It has four products: Places (global points of interest), Geometry (building footprints and polygons, including mapped parking lots), Address (global geocoded addresses) and Spend (US card transaction aggregates per place). Places covers 80M+ POIs, 15K+ brands and 900+ categories in 195+ countries and territories, updated monthly. Spend is aggregated monthly with about a two-week lag and history from January 2020. Data ships through Snowflake, AWS Marketplace, Databricks, CARTO, Esri ArcGIS or download, priced as a custom annual fee.
SafeGraph belongs on a location data providers list because its places and geometry files are a common base layer for other datasets, and customers include Clear Channel Europe and Avison Young. It no longer sells foot traffic: Advan bought its Patterns business in November 2022 and Patterns was retired at the start of 2023, though some guides still describe SafeGraph as a foot traffic source. Use SafeGraph for what is where. Huq supplies the visits: weekly footfall, catchment and dwell across 35 markets.
Pros
- 80M+ POIs, 15K+ brands and 900+ categories across 195+ countries and territories
- Building footprints, including mapped parking lots
- US Spend data with history from January 2020
- Delivery through Snowflake, AWS Marketplace, Databricks, CARTO and Esri ArcGIS
Cons
- No foot traffic or visit data since Patterns was retired in 2023
- No analytics dashboard; it sells data only
- Spend data covers the US only
8. Dataplor: best for teams that need broad global POI coverage with foot traffic signals
Dataplor is a global location data company focused on points of interest. It claims 370+ million places across 250+ countries and territories on one consistent schema, updated weekly, and says it offers 200M+ POIs with foot traffic signals. It sells two products. The Global AI Platform, for strategy and operations teams, has an interactive map, no-code analysis, KPI dashboards and foot traffic data. The Global Dataset, for technical and data science teams, delivers normalized data with custom cuts and schemas by API or flat file. It serves commercial real estate, CPG, financial services, mapping, quick service restaurants, retail and logistics, with logos including Coca-Cola, DoorDash, Uber and Sysco.
Dataplor earns a place among location data providers for the breadth of its places coverage, and its estimated visit data reaches other tools too: in July 2025 SiteZeus added it to its Locate platform. Its site doesn't describe how the data is validated, so treat coverage figures as vendor claims and check how foot traffic signals are measured in your markets. Huq's focus is the visits themselves, with weekly footfall, catchment and dwell across 35 markets and 1,000+ locations validated per market twice a year.
Pros
- Very broad global POI coverage: 370+ million places in 250+ countries and territories (vendor claim)
- Weekly updates on one consistent global schema (vendor claim)
- Choice of no-code platform or dataset via API and flat files
- Its estimated visit data powers foot traffic inside SiteZeus
Cons
- Its site doesn't describe how the data is validated, so coverage and accuracy figures are vendor claims
- Its strength is places breadth; check how foot traffic signals are measured in your markets before using them for site decisions
9. Echo Analytics: best for teams that want footfall and catchment datasets as files
Echo Analytics is a geospatial data provider that sells location datasets rather than an analysis dashboard. Places covers points of interest and Shapes covers commercial building footprints, with a claim of 80M+ locations worldwide and 95%+ polygon coverage. On top sit insight datasets: Footfall in and around POIs, Catchment Area (where visits come from), Cross-visitation (visits shared between POIs), GeoPersona audience segments and Travel Patterns (home and work locations near POIs). Its Datarade listings span Europe and the US. Data arrives as files with APIs and public documentation, and partners such as CARTO and Esri handle visualization for retail, adtech, FMCG and consulting buyers.
Echo belongs on this list because it packages footfall, catchment and cross-visitation as ready-made datasets, so data teams skip the raw-ping stage without adopting a dashboard. Country coverage varies by product, from 5 to 33 countries, and it offers free samples before you buy. Huq covers similar footfall, catchment and cross-visitation ground, but pairs it with a self-serve Explore map, Projects and monthly PDF reports, with Parquet or CSV feeds to S3 or Google Cloud Storage for technical teams.
Pros
- Footfall, catchment area and cross-visitation as ready-made datasets
- Building Shapes with a 95%+ polygon coverage claim
- Free samples and public documentation before you buy
- Datasets for both Europe and the US
Cons
- No analysis dashboard of its own; you'll need your own tools or a partner to visualize results
- Country coverage varies by dataset, from 5 to 33 countries
- Its homepage doesn't name a headquarters or publish accuracy validation
10. Cuebiq: best for brands and agencies measuring how campaigns drive store visits
Cuebiq is a New York location intelligence company serving brands, agencies and research institutions. Footfall Measurement shows how ad campaigns affect store visits, with regional comparisons down to the location level, and Audiences uses location data to target and optimize ads. For public sector and academic teams it builds custom datasets on mobility, public health and crisis response. Clients use a dashboard, an API and a data platform documented as Spectus, which Cuebiq's leadership spun out in 2022 as a geospatial data clean room where only aggregated outputs can be exported. Cuebiq leads with privacy, holding a TRUSTe seal and NAI membership, and its logos include The Trade Desk, Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University.
Cuebiq belongs among location data providers for its measurement and research datasets, particularly where privacy credentials matter to the buyer. Its focus is marketing: proving which campaigns drove store visits, rather than judging sites. Its site doesn't state geographic coverage, so confirm it for your markets. Huq is the closer fit for teams assessing the locations themselves, with weekly footfall, catchment, dwell, visit frequency and cross-visitation across 35 markets, plus 1,000+ locations manually validated in each market twice a year.
Pros
- Footfall Measurement ties campaigns to store visits down to the location level
- Privacy credentials: TRUSTe seal and NAI partnership
- Custom research datasets used by public sector and academic teams
- Client dashboard plus a documented API
Cons
- Leans toward marketing measurement and research rather than site selection
- Its site doesn't state geographic coverage, so confirm it for your markets
- The status of the Spectus clean room is unclear now that spectus.ai redirects to cuebiq.com
How to choose a location data provider
Visit data, raw movement or POI?
Visit data counts people at places. Raw movement data is unprocessed records your team must model. POI data lists places, not visitors. Most site decisions need visit data plus POI. If you need maps or geocoding instead, look at mapping companies such as Esri or HERE.
Ask how accuracy is tested
Ask each provider what ground truth it tests against, such as door counts or reported sales, and which country the test covers. Then check the numbers on a few locations you already know well.
Match cadence and history to the decision
Weekly data suits trend tracking and site reviews. Check how much history you get, since year-over-year comparisons need at least two full years.
Decide who will use the data
Analysts with data engineers can work from files and APIs. Business teams usually need a dashboard. Some providers offer both from the same data, which saves rebuilding analysis twice.
Frequently asked questions
What is location data?
Location data describes where places are and how people move between them. For business buyers it usually means one of three things: visit or foot traffic counts for places, raw movement records, or POI data listing businesses and their addresses. Most site and market decisions use visit data combined with POI data.
Where can I buy location data?
You can buy directly from the providers on this list or through marketplaces. Datarade lists many location datasets, and some vendors, such as Placer.ai and SafeGraph, also deliver through Snowflake and AWS. Before you sign, ask for a sample covering locations you know, so you can check the numbers against your own figures.
What is location data used for?
Retailers use it to choose sites and compare stores with competitors. Real estate teams use it to value assets and attract tenants. Investors track visit trends to estimate company performance, marketers measure whether campaigns drove store visits, and public bodies use it to monitor downtowns and plan services.
How accurate is location data?
It varies by provider and by country, and few vendors publish error rates. Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year and publishes results by country, such as 81.9% accuracy in Great Britain against a ~65% industry benchmark. Ask any provider which country a test covers and what ground truth it used.
Where can I buy mobile location data?
Raw mobile location data is sold by providers such as Veraset and Unacast, usually as files delivered to S3 or Google Cloud, or through APIs. Advan sells processed visit datasets. Ask each vendor how consent was collected and how sensitive locations are handled. If you need answers rather than raw files, a platform with visit data built in saves modeling work.
Does Huq provide location data for the US?
Yes. The US is one of Huq's 35 markets, with weekly data for any drawn area or map layer: footfall by week, month and year, residents vs visitors, catchment and drive time, dwell, frequency, time of day, cross-visitation, density, transportation mode, POIs, brands and industries. Demographics and geo-spend are available in selected markets. Request a free analysis of a US location.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoSources
- Huq platform
- Huq data feeds
- Huq: Walmart sales validation study
- Huq: How accurate is footfall data?
- Datarade: location data
- Placer.ai
- Placer.ai: FAQ
- Placer.ai: data delivery methods
- Advan Research
- Advan Research: data dictionaries
- Advan Research: SafeGraph Patterns acquisition
- Unacast
- Unacast: foot traffic data
- Unacast: visitation datasets
- Unacast: Unacast and Gravy Analytics merge
- FTC: final order on Gravy Analytics and Venntel
- Veraset
- Foursquare
- Foursquare Places
- AdExchanger: Infillion acquires Foursquare
- SafeGraph
- SafeGraph Places
- SafeGraph Spend
- SafeGraph docs: Weekly Patterns retirement
- Dataplor
- SiteZeus: Dataplor foot traffic integration
- Echo Analytics
- Datarade: Echo Analytics foot traffic
- Cuebiq
- Spectus: data clean room launch
- Placer.ai: pricing
- Capterra: Placer.ai reviews
- Business Wire: Advan acquires RetailStat REI
- Business Wire: Unacast financing (Dec 2025)
- The Record: Gravy Analytics breach
- SafeGraph: pricing
- Esri: Foursquare data in Business Analyst
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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