Quick answer
Foot traffic data helps software understand when public venues are likely to be busy or quiet. BestTime exposes that signal as API-ready venue forecasts: 24 hours by 7 days, normalized 0-100 busyness scores, current live status where available, dwell-time indicators, and venue search/filtering endpoints.
Use BestTime when your app needs to answer questions like "which bars are busy tonight?", "when is this museum quiet?", "is this venue busier than usual right now?", or "which high-rated places match this day, hour, location, category, and demand level?"
Start with API credits View API docsWhat BestTime provides
- Hourly foot traffic forecasts for every day of the week.
- Normalized 0-100 values that are easy to display, rank, filter, and compare.
- Live busyness where available, compared with the expected forecast for that hour.
- Venue Search API for matching public venues by name and address.
- Venue Filter API for finding venues by predicted traffic, category, day, hour, location, ratings, reviews, price level, and dwell time.
No absolute visitor counts
BestTime is designed for relative public-venue demand, not person-level tracking. The API does not return raw device traces, customer identities, or absolute visitor counts. That makes it a practical fit for products that need busy/quiet logic without building a sensitive location-data pipeline.
Common API workflows
- Forecast one venue. Match a venue by name and address, then retrieve the full 24 by 7 forecast profile with peak and quiet times.
- Compare live demand. Use live busyness where available to show whether a venue is currently busier or quieter than expected.
- Filter places by time. Use the Venue Filter API to find venues that match a forecasted traffic level for a specific day, hour, category, and area.
- Power city guides. Auto-curate lists such as busy nightlife, quiet attractions, low-wait cafes, or places likely to be lively at a planned time.
Where foot traffic data creates value
| Use case | BestTime signal | Example product outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Travel and city guides | Predicted busy and quiet hours by venue category. | Recommend attractions, bars, cafes, and restaurants for the user's planned time. |
| Recommendation engines | Relative busyness, dwell time, ratings, reviews, and category filters. | Rank venues by fit instead of only distance or popularity. |
| Operations dashboards | Live busyness where available compared with the normal forecast. | Spot unusually busy or quiet public venues in a market. |
| Market research | Weekday, weekend, and hour-of-day demand patterns. | Compare public venue demand without collecting raw location data. |
Best fit and limits
Best fit
BestTime is strongest for apps, data products, and internal workflows that need public-venue busyness signals by venue, time, category, and location.
Limits
BestTime should not be used when you need exact visitor counts, household-level attribution, private workplace occupancy, staffing forecasts, or a custom enterprise location intelligence dashboard.
Build with foot traffic data
Test the API with real venue workflows: forecast one venue, compare live demand, or filter venues by predicted traffic for a day and hour.
Start with API credits Read API docs