Free Foot Traffic Data: Where to Get It

Quick answer

Short answer: you can get foot traffic data for free in three places. BestTime gives you a free test account for its foot traffic API, with no credit card. BestTime's city guides at besttime.app/app show busy and quiet hours for venues in a city, free in the browser. Placer.ai has a limited free dashboard. Full datasets from Placer.ai, Advan Research, Pine59, Veraset and Foursquare are paid and sold by quote.

When the free test is not enough, BestTime Basic Usage costs $29 a month including 1,200 credits, then $0.04 a credit.

Free foot traffic data options compared

What you can get without paying, checked on October 20, 2026.

1. BestTime free test account

BestTime is a foot traffic API for public venues. It combines anonymized, aggregated phone location data with other real-world signals such as weather, events and holidays, and returns how busy a venue is forecast to be for every hour of the week on a 0-100 scale. The free test account uses the same API as paid plans, so what you build during the test keeps working when you upgrade.

1. Sign up without a credit card. You get API keys and free test credits.
2. Forecast venues you know. Send a venue name and address. The first forecast for a venue costs 2 credits, and each refresh by venue ID costs 1 credit.
3. Check the hours. Compare the busy and quiet hours with what you see in real life.
4. Upgrade when it fits. Basic Usage is $29 a month including 1,200 credits. For a fixed venue list, Pro Venues starts at $96 a month for 50 venues with unlimited forecasts.

2. BestTime free city guides

If you only need to look, not build, BestTime's public city guides show busy and quiet hours for popular venues in a city. The address follows the pattern besttime.app/app/<country>/<city>, for example New York or London. Add a category such as bar, restaurant, cafe or sightseeing to narrow the list, as in bars in New York.

The guides are free and need no API key. They are made for browsing, so there is no export. For data inside your own app, use the free test account.

3. Placer.ai free version

Placer.ai offers a free version that shows a small part of its platform. Its paid plans are custom subscription packages, there is no free trial of the full suite, and API keys are given on request. Public city records show one year of paid access costing between $18,522 and $52,462. See what Placer.ai costs for the contracts.

What is not free

Full foot traffic datasets are paid. The large providers sell by quote and publish no prices:

• Placer.ai: visit estimates, trade areas and visitor demographics. Free limited dashboard, paid plans by quote.
• Advan Research: visits from phone location data combined with card transactions. Demo, then data feeds or dashboards.
• Pine59 (formerly Unacast's location insights): foot traffic, trade areas and visitor journeys. Access request, then a contract.
• Veraset: raw movement data and visits to places. Quote, with a sample dataset.
• Foursquare Attribution: store visit reports for ad campaigns. Through sales.

Some cities publish counts from street sensors as open data. Those cover fixed points on a street, not venues. See the foot traffic data providers compared for what each provider sells.

Which free option fits you?

• You are building an app, guide or venue tool: the BestTime free test account, because it is the same API you would pay for.
• You want to check a few venues by hand: the BestTime city guides.
• You need visit counts for stores or malls: the Placer.ai free version, then a quote.
• You need raw movement data for your own models: ask Veraset for its sample dataset.

Want to know how a forecast for a given hour works? Read how to forecast how crowded a venue will be.

How we checked

1. On October 20, 2026 we opened each provider's own pricing and product pages, linked in the sources.
2. We list an option as free only if you can see or query data without paying.
3. BestTime prices come from BestTime's own pricing page on the same day.