Foursquare Places API alternative

Foursquare is for venue depth. Open Places API is for capped search.

Foursquare is a strong choice when the venue profile is the product. Open Places API is the smaller choice when your backend needs "what places are near here?", category area lists, and cacheable open-data results at a bill you can cap before launch.

Start for free Read the docs v3 migration guide FSQ OS Places guide

Do not pay for venue depth you will not use.

Need	Open Places API	Foursquare Places
Backend place search	Yes. One authenticated `/v1/places` GET for server-side JSON.	Yes. Search, autocomplete, and details endpoints are part of the platform.
Venue-rich product experience	No photos, tips, ratings, or real-time popularity signals.	A core reason to use Foursquare.
Open dataset option	Hosted Overture-backed search. Foursquare-sourced open records are part of Overture's base data.	FSQ OS Places is available as an open dataset if you want to run it yourself.
Area listing and storage	Use `category` browse, page with `offset`, and store returned open-data results.	Review current Foursquare caching and API terms for your account type.
Your own place records	Account-owned layers: corrections, suppressions, private records, per-key presets.	Available through Foursquare's platform and data products, not as the same first-class layer concept.
Pricing model	Flat plans, hard caps, no overages. $0 / $19 / $49 / $249 per month.	Usage-based by endpoint and tier; see current Foursquare pricing.
Coverage	39 million places across 19 countries and territories.	Broader global POI footprint and proprietary venue data.

The hosted-search alternative to self-hosting open places data.

Foursquare also publishes FSQ OS Places as open data. That is useful when your team wants raw files, batch joins, enrichment, or full control over its own serving stack. The tradeoff is operational: ingest, index, monitor, serve, and refresh it every month.

Open Places API is for the other path: keep the data-serving stack out of your backlog and call a hosted proximity search endpoint from your backend.

curl -G "https://api.openplacesapi.com/v1/places" \
  --data-urlencode "q=hotel" \
  --data-urlencode "lat=51.5074" \
  --data-urlencode "lon=-0.1278" \
  --data-urlencode "radius_mi=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPEN_PLACES_API_KEY"

Choose by the job.

Choose Foursquare

The place page needs ratings, photos, tips, chains, popularity, rich venue metadata, or a Foursquare-specific source.

Choose Open Places API

The product needs nearby place search, predictable monthly quotas, open Overture-backed data, and account-owned corrections.

Choose self-hosting

Your team already runs geospatial data pipelines and wants full control over ranking, filtering, infrastructure, and refresh cadence.

Foursquare alternative FAQ.

Is Open Places API a Foursquare Places API replacement?

For backend proximity search, sometimes. It does not replace Foursquare's richer venue intelligence, such as photos, tips, ratings, rich hours, chain data, popularity, or movement-based products.

How does pricing differ from Foursquare?

Foursquare Places API pricing is usage-based by endpoint and tier. Open Places API uses flat monthly quotas with hard caps: $0 for 10,000 searches, $19 for 30,000, $49 for 100,000, and $249 for 1 million. At the cap the API stops instead of billing overage, and returned open-data results can be stored.

What about FSQ OS Places?

FSQ OS Places is a valuable open dataset if you want to self-host or run data pipelines. Open Places API is different: it hosts Overture-backed proximity search as an API, so you do not run ingestion, indexing, serving, and monthly refreshes yourself.

When is Foursquare the better choice?

When venue richness is load-bearing: photos, tips, ratings, rich metadata, global venue intelligence, or Foursquare-specific data. Open Places API is intentionally narrower.

More comparisons.

Google Places · Mapbox · HERE · Geoapify · LocationIQ