Use case
Where to open a shop, café or practice
You're choosing a street for one café, gym, pharmacy or practice. Start from the ready-made question for your business, check whether the area already has more than its fair share, find where people are short of one, and send the shortlist as a link.
The job, step by step
Start from your business's question
Question Library · Score
Pick your business, from café to dental practice. The map scores every hex 0–100 on the people nearby, the competition already there and how easy it is to reach, and every factor stays editable.
Check whether the area already has enough
Fair share (Location Quotient)
Compare your kind of place per 1 000 residents with the city average. 2× means twice the city's rate, a sign the neighborhood is already well served.
Find where people are short of one
Missing (gap analysis)
See how many the hex would have at the city's rate, minus how many it has, for the hex alone or Within a 10-minute walk.
Test the busy stretch
Clusters (Getis-Ord Gi*)
A bright street can be chance. The Clusters map marks hexes genuinely busy or genuinely quiet only when they pass a significance test.
Read one hex, then share the shortlist
Hex details · Copy link
Click any hex for the raw value behind each factor. Copy link reopens the exact map, factors and weights included, for a partner, a bank or a landlord.
Start from your business
Each button opens that business's ready-made question from the Question Library on a real map of London, every factor still editable.
Try it on a real map
Each button opens the example in the map app, ready to change.
Real answers, with sources
Questions like these, already answered for real cities. Each answer names its source and census year, says what it cannot show, and opens on the live map.
New York City · Score map
Where should you open a new coffee shop in New York City?
Top Standout: Brooklyn (south)
Read the answerBerlin · Score map
Where should you open a new café in Berlin?
Top Standout: Marzahn
Read the answerBerlin · Missing map
Where are bakeries missing for the people who live there in Berlin?
Top Standout: Wittenau
Read the answerLondon · Fair share map
Which London neighborhoods have more than their fair share of cafés?
Top Standout: Soho
Read the answerWhy the Score alone isn't enough
A high Score says the mix is right. It doesn't say the street is free of rivals: Fair share tells you that, and Missing tells you whether the people nearby are actually short of your kind of place. When all three agree, you have a shortlist worth walking.
What to send your landlord or bank
Hex details lists the raw numbers behind a hex: residents, competitors, transit stops. Export map (PNG) saves the picture, and Copy link sends the live map, so whoever opens it can change the weights and check for themselves.
What this can't tell you
- No visits, sales or opening hours: MapBees maps who lives near each hex and what is already there, not how busy a place is.
- Rents, leases and vacant units are not in the data.
- Population comes from one census year per country, and each figure is an estimate for its hex.
Frequently asked questions
Which businesses have a ready-made question?
Ten: café, restaurant, bar, gym, pharmacy, dental practice, hair salon, coworking space, convenience store and bakery. Any other business can be scored by picking its factors yourself, from 1,014 kinds of place.
What if my city has no data for one of the factors?
The map drops that factor, says so on the map, and ranks every hex on the rest.
Does MapBees know how busy a street is?
No. It has no visit or footfall data. It shows who lives near each hex and what is already there, which you can check before you have a single sale. Where a city has it, Pedestrian potential estimates how much a hex's transit timetable, streets and everyday places invite walking; it is not a count of people.
Is it free to use?
The map app runs in your browser on the Free Tier, in 147 cities across 10 countries.
Keep reading
How MapBees scores a hex (explained simply)
Every colored hex on the map carries a score from 0–100 answering one question: how good is this exact hex for what you care about? Here is what that number means, how you shape it, and how its hex card shows why - in plain language, on London.
Read the guideFair share: the Location Quotient, explained simply
A number on its own tells you little. 2.7× the London average tells you a lot. Here is the formula behind the Fair share map (the Location Quotient), worked through with cafés in London.
Read the guideMeet Scout Bee (a map you can just talk to)
Type what you're actually trying to do - "a coffee shop somewhere busy in Houston" - and Scout Bee sets up the map, shows you exactly what it changed, keeps your own changes, and lets you undo it. Here is everything it can do, using Houston throughout.
Read the guideAbout 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.