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Evolving FSQ Open Source Places

October 8, 2025 by Vikram Gundeti

In November 2024, we took a bold step in open-sourcing our Places dataset with a hypothesis that a community driven approach is the only way to create a sustainable and robust places dataset that can serve the needs of diverse problem domains. Our thesis has been validated with the tremendous progress we have been able to make in improving this open dataset since its inception.

Increased adoption: Our S3 listing is downloaded from more than 5000 unique IPs every month, a steady increase from 500 unique IPs when we first launched. More than 250k queries are executed on our Snowflake listing every month. And we have 3000+ monthly downloads of our dataset on HuggingFace.

Accelerated data improvements: We continuously refined our dataset adding more than a million places since launch with a monthly high of 160k+ new places just in September. More than 27 million edits have been proposed by our Placemaker community in the last year out of which close to 17 million have been resolved.

Diversified Placemaker community: We have been able to diversify our community from just the users of our apps to a broader user base with around 2000 Placemaker sign-ups from the open-source community using our Placemaker tools. We have also seen business owners gravitating towards our Placemaker Tools to update their own listings.

Today, we’re taking the next step in that journey with updates that will strengthen our collaborative ecosystem and unlock even greater potential for data improvement.

The Power of Placemaker Tools

At the heart of our community-driven approach are our Placemaker Tools, which enable anyone to contribute to and improve the OS Places dataset. Through these tools, contributors can:

Add new places : Submit businesses, landmarks, and points of interest missing from the dataset

Update existing information: update addresses, phone numbers, business hours, and other details

Verify and validate: Confirm the accuracy of place information through community consensus

Enhance place details: Add categories, attributes, and rich contextual information

Report closures: Flag businesses that have permanently closed or relocated

These tools have proven that when given accessible ways to contribute, people eagerly improve the data that powers their favorite applications. The 27 million edits proposed through Placemaker Tools demonstrate the power of community-driven data maintenance at scale. As we evolve our approach, Placemaker Tools remain central to our strategy. By creating stronger connections between dataset consumers and the improvement ecosystem, we can channel community efforts where they matter most, whether that’s improving coverage in underserved regions, updating time-sensitive information, or enriching place details for specific use cases.

Unveiling the Next Chapter

Our October release transitions FSQ OS Places from public S3 bucket access to our new Places portal. Users can register, generate an access token, and retrieve the data through an Iceberg catalog. The data remains completely free with proper attribution under our Apache 2.0 license.

Why This Evolution Matters

Over the past year, we’ve seen incredible adoption of our dataset across diverse industries and use cases. But despite the widespread adoption of our OS Places dataset, the end users of applications built on this dataset rarely know it is even sourced from Foursquare or that they have an opportunity to improve it using our Placemaker Tools. In our current anonymous distribution model, there’s no path from “using an app with great location data” to “helping improve that location data.”

A root cause here is a lack of awareness . When users discover that their favorite applications are powered by a community-driven dataset, many become eager contributors through our Placemaker Tools. This creates a virtuous cycle: better data enables better applications, which reach more users, who contribute more improvements, creating even better data.

That is why we’re introducing this new approach to build connections with the direct consumers of our dataset and work together to spread awareness of FSQ OS Places and empower their user communities to contribute through Placemaker Tools.

What This Means for You

Accessing the dataset

FSQ OS Places will now be accessible through three primary channels:

New Places Portal: Visit our new portal to create your free account and generate an access token. Use the access token to retrieve OS Places data from our Iceberg catalog.

Snowflake: Access OS Places data from the Snowflake marketplace with the same ease as before.

HuggingFace: Get approved for access to the OS Places data through HuggingFace by providing your contact...