TravelTime Places: POI data API you can query by travel time

TravelTime Places is the POI data layer of the TravelTime Data API.

It returns named places such as cafés, shops, schools and gyms, with category, brand and coordinates, from one HTTP endpoint. Each place is matched across Foursquare, OpenStreetMap and Overture, plus national government registers, and tagged to the H3 cell it sits in.

That makes TravelTime POIs easy to count, filter and rank inside any area, including the area someone can actually reach in a set travel time.

The Places layer is one of several releases in our TravelTime Data API. Read the overview for more info on the other location datasets, including local neighbourhood insights, environmental data, open space, public transit, and more.

What's in the TravelTime Places data?

The Places layer gives you one matched record per place, with the fields and controls you need to use POI data at scale.

• Sources: Foursquare, OpenStreetMap and Overture, plus national government registers. Check our sources and registers here.
• Taxonomy: 16 groups across three levels (group, category, detail). Group and category ids work as filters.
• Confidence: set a minimum number of agreeing sources from 1 to 3 (min_sources, default 2). Places can also be filtered to verified records only.
• Fields per place: id, name, category, brand, lat, lng, cell, verified and distance_m.
• Coverage: All 33 full-data countries.
• Formats: JSON or GeoJSON.

Read more about the data and our data updates here.

Places API endpoints

Three endpoints cover listing places, looking them up and counting places by area.

How do you query places data?

You can query places data around a point, in a box, by H3 cell or by travel time, and filter the results in the same request.

• Around a point: near with radius_m, up to 50 km.
• In a box: bbox (south, west, north, east).
• By H3 cell: cells takes a list of H3 cell ids; at returns the one cell around a point. Cell counts run at resolutions 6 to 10.
• By travel time: get the H3 cells someone can reach from the TravelTime API, then pass them as cells. The same cell ids work across every layer.
• Filters: category, brand, verified, min_sources and a name search with q. Geohash: grid=geohash (precision 6 or 7) returns places on a geohash grid instead of H3, with bbox, near or cells.

Who uses POI data from TravelTime?

Teams use TravelTime POIs wherever a product or analysis needs to know what's nearby, across marketplace search, location intelligence platforms, AI agents, and routing.

• Property portals that need to know what's near a listing, powering more personalised search and matching.
• Site selection and commercial real estate teams sizing catchments and competition, and the routes target demographics take to each site.
• Location intelligence and analytics teams who need a clean POI base to join to their own data.
• AI and search teams grounding answers about "what's near here" in real places.
• Travel and hotel search showing amenities within reach of a stay.
• Logistics and routing teams determining the best stops and understanding what’s nearby.

What questions can POI data answer?

With places data on an H3 grid, everyday location questions become a single query. The Data API helps answer more than just what is in a location, but how different users will reach that location.

• How many supermarkets are within a 10-minute walk of this flat?
• Where are the coffee chains in this town, and which cells have none?
• Which gyms sit inside this H3 cell?
• How many places of each category are in the area reachable in 20 minutes by public transport?

Why query places by travel time?

Understanding what’s nearby or accessible demands a real travel time, not a distance.

A supermarket 500 metres away on the other side of a river is not near for someone on foot, and a radius count can't tell the difference. With travel times, you count the places a person can actually reach via different transport modes.

Request the H3 cells reachable in a set time and mode from the TravelTime H3 API, then pass them to /v1/places for a list or /v1/places/cells for counts by category. The answer changes from "12 cafés within 1 km" to "8 cafés within a 10-minute walk", which is what a buyer, a guest or a site analyst means when they ask what is nearby.

Because the cells are shared across every TravelTime layer, the same catchment can then be described with population, transport and green space too.

Why use TravelTime for POI data?

Most location data tells you what is near a point. TravelTime tells you what people can actually reach, by walking, cycling, driving or public transport, and the Data API describes everything inside that reach.

• One API, one grid: places, transport, roads, boundaries, demographics, neighbourhood, open spaces, proximity and custom scores, all on the same H3 grid. One cell id joins them all.
• Real catchments, not radius rings: reachable cells from the TravelTime API pass straight into any layer, so every answer is based on time, not distance.
• Built to store and join: a data layer designed to be stored, joined and aggregated for AI, search and analytics, not just shown on a map.
• Wide coverage: full data in 33 countries and public transport in 126.
• Predictable cost: included with a TravelTime licence on fixed-cost plans.

How do you get started with the Places API?

You can make your first places data request in a few minutes.

1. Get an API key: create a TravelTime account and find your application ID and API key on the dashboard and send X-Application-Id and X-Api-Key with each request.
2. Check your coverage: call /v1/catalog/{country} to see the layers and sources available where you work.
3. Try a first query: test the Data API with the locations or questions that matter for your business.
4. Build on it: read the Data API docs for every endpoint.
5. Chat to us: talk to the TravelTime team about your use case.