Best POI data providers in 2026

"POI data" covers a few different products: big datasets you download, APIs you query one place at a time, and services that check whether a place is still real and open. The right provider depends on which of those you need. Here are the main options, described from each provider's own documentation.

SafeGraph Places

A commercial POI dataset. SafeGraph's docs describe records with a persistent Placekey, name, address, coordinates and NAICS-based category, plus enrichment fields like hours, phone, website and brand. Records can carry building polygons and opened/closed months. SafeGraph says it covers over 80 million POIs globally, and it publishes its own coverage and quality benchmarks.

Best for: analytics and data science teams that want a large, consistently keyed dataset with polygons.

Foursquare (Places API and FSQ Open Source Places)

Two products. FSQ OS Places is an open dataset of 100M+ global POIs with core attributes, released under Apache 2.0. Since October 2025, new releases come through Foursquare's portal, Snowflake or Hugging Face. The Places API adds real-time venue search, autocomplete and matching, and richer attributes are in paid tiers.

Best for: apps that need venue search and autocomplete, and teams that want a free global base layer.

Overture Maps

An open dataset from the Overture Maps Foundation. Its places theme is free to download monthly from Amazon S3 and Azure, under CDLA Permissive 2.0 or Apache 2.0 depending on the source.

Best for: a free, permissively licensed starting point you process yourself.

Google Places API

Part of Google Maps Platform. You query it per place or per search, and it returns details including business status, hours and contact info as Google Maps shows them.

Best for: consumer apps already built on Google Maps.

VOYGR

VOYGR doesn't sell a static dataset. It validates and enriches the places you send, or the places you find through it, at the time you ask:

• POST /v1/validate: does the place exist at that address, and is it open, closed, unknown or not_exists
• POST /v1/enrich: hours, phone, website, socials, owners, and custom attributes you describe in plain English, each with a confidence and an as_of date. Works worldwide.
• Batch jobs of up to 10,000 places, and Prospecting to search 16M+ US places by city and category
• Built for AI agents: an llms.txt, an OpenAPI spec and MCP servers

Best for: keeping a place list accurate. That means finding closures, filling missing fields, answering questions a dataset doesn't cover, and doing it from an AI agent.

Choosing

• Analytics at scale: SafeGraph, or Overture/FSQ OS if you want open data.
• Search inside an app: Foursquare Places API or Google Places API.
• Freshness and custom fields on the places you already have: VOYGR, often on top of one of the datasets above.

Freshness is the common weak spot. In our test of 400 Overture places, VOYGR marked 93 as closed, and 23 of 86 confirmed closures still showed as open or had no listing on Google Maps. Whatever you pick, plan how you'll catch closures.

Free VOYGR key with 2.5K credits: api.voygr.tech/checkout.