SafeGraph alternative when you need answers, not rows

London map colored by cafés as a share of all places to eat and drink, with brighter hexes leaning more toward cafés — Cafés as a share of everything to eat and drink in London. Brighter hexes lean toward cafés.

Where SafeGraph fits

SafeGraph's places data is built for teams that model, enrich and join location data themselves, in a warehouse, a notebook or a GIS. With that team in place, raw data gives you full control. MapBees is for the opposite case: you have a question about neighborhoods and no pipeline. The join between places, buildings and people is already done in every city, and the formulas you would write next are named map types.

Where SafeGraph is the better fit

You need row-level place records to join to your own customer, sales or store data.
You are building your own model, product or dashboard on top of a places dataset.
You need details MapBees doesn't map, such as brands, opening hours or visit patterns.

What you can answer in MapBees today

From places data to an answer, without a pipeline
Your question	Where in MapBees	What you see
How many pharmacies are there per 1 000 residents?	Amount · per 1 000 residents	Places divided by census residents in each hex, ready to compare across the city.
What share of places to eat and drink are cafés?	Amount · share of its category	Cafés as a share of everything to eat and drink in each hex.
How mixed is the restaurant scene?	Variety (Simpson and Shannon)	How mixed a set of cuisines is in each hex, and how evenly they are spread.
Where is the city short of grocery stores?	Missing (gap analysis)	The shortfall against the city's rate, for the hex alone or Within a 10-minute walk.
Which source is behind each measure?	Data catalog index	Every measure lists its source and the cities it covers.

Try it on a real map

Each button opens the example in the map app, ready to change.

Amount: pharmacies per 1 000 residents in London Amount: cafés as a share of eating and drinking in London Variety: six cuisines in London Missing: grocery stores in London

The join is the hard part, and it is done

A places dataset is the start of an answer. Before it can tell you where a pharmacy is missing, it needs residents on the same geography, a fair way to compare busy and quiet neighborhoods, and a rule for what counts as a real gap. MapBees has done that for 147 cities: places from Overture Maps and people from each country's census sit on the same hexes, and the comparisons are map types you pick from a list.

London map colored by grocery stores within a 10-minute walk, missing at the London rate: blue hexagons short of stores, red hexagons with more than expected, gray about as expected — Grocery stores Within a 10-minute walk, missing at the London rate. Blue hexes are short of stores; red ones have more than expected.

What MapBees does differently

1,014 kinds of place in 14 categories from Overture Maps, already counted for every hex about 350 m across.
In context, not raw: count places per 1 000 residents, per km² or as a share of their category, against census population on the same grid.
The next step is built in: Fair share, Missing, Clusters and Variety are map types, not code you write.
Rows when you want them: Export ranked hexes (CSV) downloads the ranking behind the map.

Frequently asked questions

Can I download MapBees data?

You can export what a map shows: Export ranked hexes (CSV) and Export map (PNG). There is no bulk download of the underlying data.

What data does MapBees use?

Places, buildings and streets from Overture Maps, transit timetables (GTFS) from each city's transit agencies, and population, age, households and income from each country's census, such as ONS Census 2021 in the United Kingdom or Statistics Canada Census 2021 in Canada.

Does MapBees have visit patterns?

No. MapBees has no visit or mobile location data. It measures what is in each hex and who lives there.

Do I need a data team to use MapBees?

No. Pick a map type and a kind of place, and the map draws itself in your browser, on the Free Tier.

Keep reading

The complete measure catalog

A searchable index of all 2,037 measures behind a MapBees score — what each one measures, which countries publish it, and how many cities actually carry it.

Read the guide

Per 1 000 residents: turning a count into a rate, explained simply

Two hexes both have one pharmacy. One has 300 residents, the other 6 000. A plain count says they are the same. 'Per 1 000 residents' says the first is twenty times better served. Here is the formula, and the small-numbers trap it has to avoid.

Read the guide

Share of its category: what fraction of the whole, explained simply

Ten cafés in a hex is one story if they are the only ten food places, and another if they sit among two hundred restaurants. 'Share of its category' tells you which - here worked through with cafés as a share of everything to eat and drink in London.

Read the guide

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SafeGraph is a trademark of its respective owner. This comparison describes each product's public positioning as of October 3, 2026, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by SafeGraph.

About the author

Tinkal Gogoi(LinkedIn profile, opens in a new tab)Founder & Location Data Engineer

Builds MapBees's location-intelligence pipeline end to end — census and Overture Maps ingestion, H3 hex scoring, and the map interface — and writes the methodology behind every number on the site.