Foot traffic API for
Identify the best venues based on how busy they will be.
used by
Find your desired venues by analyzing foot traffic
Let's face it, in a big city there are often too many places to choose from. Using our powerful tools you can find out which places are most busy during different days of the week: Filter venues on foot traffic, venue types, neighborhoods, ratings, number of reviews, and more.
For instance, you can automatically create curated lists of the busiest bars on a Thursday evening in a certain area, or suggest the best time to visit a museum to avoid the peak of visitors.
Stop guessing at what time and day most people visit a venue
Get foot traffic data around the world for public venues like stores, restaurants, bars, supermarkets, gyms, parks, museums, attractions, malls, etc. It forecasts how busy it will get at each hour of the week, at which times the peaks are, and much more.
Be the first to know
Be the first to know if it’s crowded, or if it's actually too quiet to bother.
For popular locations, BestTime provides live foot traffic data. In real-time, see how busy a venue is compared to the same day and hour in previous weeks.
Make your apps more intelligent using the API
Using the software API you can get foot-traffic data for individual venues, or search for multiple venues in cities.
The powerful filter functionality makes it possible to programmatically find your desired venues based on foot-traffic intensity, geographic location, day, hour, reviews, ratings, and business types.
Click the two code example buttons below.
/filter?busy_min=50&types=BAR&day_int=4&lat=37.7882488&lng=-122.4370937&radius=10000&reviews_min=500&rating_min=4&api_key_private=pri_9w23f67dcb8360da9237p498f289f2dwb
{
"venues": [
{
"foot_traffic_percentage": [
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0, 35, 50,
65, 80, 85, 80, 70,50,
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
],
"venue_name": "Charmaine's Rooftop Bar & Lounge",
"venue_address": "1100 Market Street Entrance 45 McAllister St at San Francisco, CA 94102 United States",
"venue_id": "ven_73733344556152595a44625241596841536f302d4557524a496843",
"venue_lat": 37.780966,
"venue_lng": -122.4124106,
"venue_type": "BAR",
"price_level": 3,
"rating": 4.4,
"reviews": 1194,
"day_info": {
"day_int": 4,
"day_max": 80,
"day_mean": 75,
"day_rank_max": 1,
"day_rank_mean": 2,
"day_text": "Friday",
"venue_closed": 21,
"venue_open": 16
}
"day_int": 4,
},
{
"foot_traffic_percentage": [
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0, 30, 45,
55, 60, 75, 95, 100,
70, 35, 0, 0, 0, 0
],
"venue_name": "Novela",
"venue_address": "662 Mission St San Francisco, CA 94105 United States",
"venue_id": "ven_73736634746861716337745241596841324856536453344a496843",
"venue_lat": 37.787097,
"venue_lng": -122.40136,
"venue_type": "BAR",
"price_level": 2,
"rating": 4.3,
"reviews": 1018,
"day_info": {
"day_int": 4,
"day_max": 100,
"day_mean": 63,
"day_rank_max": 1,
"day_rank_mean": 1,
"day_text": "Friday",
"venue_closed": 2,
"venue_open": 17
},
"day_int": 4,
},
{
"day_info": {
"day_int": 4,
"day_max": 95,
"day_mean": 65,
"day_rank_max": 2,
"day_rank_mean": 1,
"day_text": "Friday",
"venue_closed": 2,
"venue_open": 16
},
"day_int": 4,
"foot_traffic_percentage": [
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 20, 65, 95,
85, 90, 95, 85, 60,
35, 15, 0, 0, 0, 0
],
"price_level": 2,
"rating": 4.4,
"reviews": 659,
"venue_address": "500 Divisadero St San Francisco, CA 94117 United States",
"venue_id": "ven_73787063686a5f416b754b52415968412d3672375a56704a496843",
"venue_lat": 37.7742011,
"venue_lng": -122.4373746,
"venue_name": "Madrone Art Bar",
"venue_type": "BAR"
},
{
"day_info": {
"day_int": 4,
"day_max": 100,
"day_mean": 75,
"day_rank_max": 1,
"day_rank_mean": 2,
"day_text": "Friday",
"venue_closed": 21,
"venue_open": 16
},
"day_int": 4,
"foot_traffic_percentage": [
0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 45, 60, 85,
100, 80, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0, 0
],
"price_level": 2,
"rating": 4.5,
"reviews": 1030,
"venue_address": "3010 20th St San Francisco, CA 94110 United States",
"venue_id": "ven_77785a52503756633636665241346a2d647a50342d63464a496843",
"venue_lat": 37.7593246,
"venue_lng": -122.4112117,
"venue_name": "Trick Dog",
"venue_type": "BAR"
},
... Other venues hidden ...
],
"venues_n": 231,
"window": {
"day_window": "Friday 6AM until Saturday 5AM",
"day_window_end_int": 5,
"day_window_end_txt": "Saturday",
"day_window_start_int": 4,
"day_window_start_txt": "Friday",
"time_local": 23,
"time_local_12": "11PM",
"time_local_index": 17,
"time_window_end": 5,
"time_window_end_12h": "5AM",
"time_window_end_ix": 23,
"time_window_start": 6,
"time_window_start_12h": "6AM",
"time_window_start_ix": 0
},
"status": "OK"
}
Automatically curated city guides
Ideal for consumer-oriented apps that list venues. It is possible to build automatically curated local city guides on top of the software API. Show for example: 1) Currently busy bars nearby a user, 2) The most popular attractions on Friday based on how long visitors stay, 3) Quiet restaurants with high reviews on Wednesday evening, 4) The best day and time to go to the gym to avoid crowds.
Avoid crowds
Inform your users with the best day and time to avoid queues at tourist attractions or museums.
Efficient resource scheduling
Save money, reduce foot wastage, maximize efficiency on labor schedules (and other scheduled resources) by applying the insights from venue foot-traffic data. Customer satisfaction can be improved by increasing employee numbers during busy times. Reducing the number of employees at less crowded hours will save money.
Optimize venue occupancy rates
Foot traffic forecasts can be used to manage supply and demand in venues. For example to optimize restaurant and bar occupancy rates. Optimize marketing by offering discounts in your apps on days and hours when foot traffic is expected to be lower.
Video demos
How to get started
Get a free test account and API access.
Try out the BestTime tools and software API within a minute. We provide you with a limited amount of free credits to test the API.
Add venue foot-traffic to your account
You can add individual venues by their name and address, or add multiple venues in an area with just one click using the website tools or our software API. Search for e.g., "McDonalds in New York City" or "Busy bars in San Fransisco CA on Friday evening".
Visualize and analyse foot-traffic data
Analyze where people go and at what time and day by looking at our heatmaps and foot-traffic charts using the Radar Tool. Additional included analyses are week overviews, peak analyses, when most people enter or leave a venue, and real-time analyses, and more.
Filter foot-traffic data
Find your desired venues. Filter loaded venues based on predicted foot-traffic, live-foot traffic, geographic location, day of the week, time of the day, venue type (category), rating, reviews, price level, or a combination of the above. Use the insights Implement the data in your own apps or company reports using the developers API.
Use-cases
Integrate the BestTime software API and our propriety foot traffic algorithms will do the heavy lifting for your business use-case.
Use-cases
Consumer-focused apps
Ideal for consumer focussed apps that list venues. Make it easier for your user to discover their ideal venue, whenever it is to show them a quiet supermarket nearby, busy bars & nightclubs on the weekend, or a quiet tourist attraction in the morning in a specific neighborhood.
Optimize digital outdoor advertisement
Find the best time to programmatically show your ads by checking foot-traffic of nearby venues that attracts specific type of consumers depending on the venue type.
Staff schedules
Schedule the right amount of staff in your venues using foot-traffic forecasts. This allows you to reduce staff and labour costs when it's quiet and maximize sales when its busy.
Track visitor impact on promotions
Track if a venue promotion or event results in more visitors using the live data. The live data can indicate per hour of the week how much more or less busy it is compared to the past weeks.
How does it work?
How does it work?
BestTime.app is a foot traffic API service that forecasts how busy a public business will be at any given hour of the week. Foot traffic data is provided for 150+ countries using anonymous phone signals. Data is available for retail, restaurants, bars, gyms, museums, and more.
Foot traffic forecasts are based on average visits over the past weeks. Busyness for any given hour is predicted relative to the biggest peak of the week for this business.
The foot traffic data is presented as percentages for each hour of the week from 0% (empty/ closed) to 100% (visitor peak of the week).
You could compare it with a supercharged FourSquare foot traffic data/ Google Popular Times API with more footfall data analytic functionality.
Tutorials
Tutorials
With these tutorials, you are mastering the BestTime tools in no-time.
Click here for more tutorials
Tutorial - Getting started — 23 Apr 2021
Beginners guide - Part 1 - Website toolsGuide how to use the BestTime.app website tools to get and analyse foot traffic data. We demonstrate this by adding bars to your account, and find the most busy bars on Friday evening in Mission District San Fransisco.
Tutorial - Getting started — 27 Apr 2021
Beginners guide - Part 2 - Developers APIGuide how to use the BestTime.app software API to get and analyse foot traffic data. We demonstrate this by adding bars to your account, and find the most busy bars on Friday evening in Mission District San Fransisco.
Tools
Tools
Use the website tools or get the same data through the software API
Venue Search tool
BestTime has created a tool that lets you search and filter world-wide foot-traffic data in order to find the best venues for whatever your needs may be. Whether it's finding where to go out Friday night or visiting a grocery store when it's less busy, this is the tool for you! Type for example "Busy bars in San Fransisco Friday evening", "Quiet supermarkets Sydney Australia on Sunday from 8 AM until 11 AM", or "Things to do in New York City Wednesday afternoon". The data is also available through the BestTime.app software API.
Foot-traffic forecast tool
Analyze foot-traffic of individual venues. Show a visitor forecast for the coming hours and live analysis. Detects the peak hours, when it will be quiet, when most visitors are coming and leaving, and reports a week overview.
Tutorial
Radar tool
Using the Radar tool you will be able to filter the foot-traffic data on visitor peak, day/time, geographic area, and business type, reviews, rating and price level. For example "Busy bars in San Fransisco Friday evening", "Quiet supermarkets Sydney Australia on Sunday from 8 AM until 11 AM", or "Things to do in New York City". The data is also available through the Venue Filter software API endpoint.
Tutorial
F.A.Q.
What is a foot traffic forecast?
A forecasts is based on visitor patterns from the past few weeks to a venue. The data is used to forecast foot traffic by hour throughout the week. Forecast values are displayed as percentages, ranging from 0 to 100%. The percentage indicates how busy a venue approximately is relative to its peak of the week. See 'live data' for a more accurate real-time value. The forecast result also includes different analysis, e.g.:
- - Most busy days of the week (maximum, and mean)
- - Daily peak hours, start, end, and intensity of the peaks
- - What time most visitors come and leave the venue
- - The quietest hours of the day
A forecast is stored for a limited amount of time on the server (see pricing plans). Querying the server can be used to retrieve an existing forecast (see ‘What is a Query?’).
What is a query?
A query gets specific data from an existing generated and stored forecast. It is faster than generating a new veneu foot-traffic forecast. Queries can be used to e.g.:
- A specific part of the analysis for a specific day. (e.g. only the peak analysis for Friday).
- Get the foot traffic forecast for the current hour, with the venues local timezone taken into account.
- Get the remaining time (in seconds) until the next peak.
What is live foot traffic data?
Live data indicates the real-time foot traffic activity of a venue - expressed as a percentage - for the current hour of the day. When the live value is similar to the forecast value, it is busy as usual. The venue is busier than usual when the live value exceeds the forecasted value. The live values can also exceed 100%. A live value of 150%, for instance, indicates that it is approximately 50% busier compared to the forecasted peak of the week for that venue.
Where do you get the data from?
The data is based on anonymized smartphone GPS signals. Third-party mobile apps collect the data from users who opt-in. The data is aggregated and normalized directly. We collect no personal data from foot traffic, not even anonymized personal identification numbers. Consequently, we can't link any of our internal data with a single person.
Does it work on all venues?
No. Venues need enough foot traffic (visitors) to make accurate forecasts. This volume needs to be even higher for real-time live data. The venue will become automatically available on BestTime when the foot traffic level is high enough. Foot traffic forecast data can be accessed 24/7, if available. When available, live data will only be shown during opening hours of the venue. At the moment, we do not add missing venues manually to our platform.
Are forecasted automatically updated?
No, after a forecast is made it will be stored on the server. Using the website or API a venue forecast can be updated.
Can I use this data on my website, or somewhere else?
Yes, you can integrate the data on your website, or in your apps using our software API.
Do you provide historical foot-traffic data?
No, we do not provide historical data. You could keep track of our foot-traffic yourself to analyse trends in the spread of relative foot-traffic data over the hours of the week. You could also use our Live data API endpoint every hour to see if there is more or less foot-traffic this current hour compared to the past weeks.
Do you provide absolute foot-traffic (visitor) volume numbers?
No we only provide relative foot-traffic numbers at the moment.
How do you deal with privacy?
We care about privacy! BestTime.app only collects location & time based data as part of the foot-traffic data. We do not collect personal data from foot-traffic data, not even anonymized personal identification numbers. Additionally, we only provide aggregated data to our customers. Both our internal and external data can therefore not be traced to a single person. When using the API only the API key usage is logged. No personal information is saved when you or your customers use the software API. Our website uses Google Analytics and SmartLook only to optimize the user experience. We do not collect or sell personal information for other purposes.