Mapbox Places

The Mapbox Places API provides access to detailed information about real-world places, including business attributes, hours, contact information, photos, activity levels, addresses, and geographic context. Each place is connected through a stable Mapbox Place ID, making it easier to build search, discovery, analytics, and AI-powered experiences. Read the documentation

Mapbox Places can support enriched search experiences, AI-powered travel and local recommendations, location analytics, custom place datasets, and applications that need detailed information about businesses and destinations.

Yes. You can combine your existing place data with Mapbox attributes and frequently refreshed details to build richer search and discovery experiences. You can store Mapbox Place IDs to link places to your own records. Storing other Mapbox attributes requires the appropriate data license. Please contact sales.

While Mapbox Places offers comprehensive global POI coverage, our most advanced spatial layers — such as telemetry-driven hourly popularity scores — are rolling out across North America and Western Europe. Popular locations include McDonald’s, Panera, Aldi, Planet Fitness, FedEx, and AMC Theatres.

Mapbox Place IDs are persistent identifiers for real-world places. They are designed to remain consistent as business information and underlying data sources change, helping applications maintain saved places, links, analytics, and other long-term references.

Yes. Use Places API data to build custom place cards, pop-ups, and other interactive experiences on your map. You control the design and presentation.

The two APIs serve different steps in a search experience. The Search Box API is built for identifying a place and returning a Mapbox Place ID. It also covers one-off lookups when a user already knows the name and location (the forward endpoint) and category-based searches for the nearest or best-matching POIs, like “coffee near me” (the category endpoint). The Details endpoint of the Places API takes the resulting mapbox_id and returns the full enriched place record, including business attributes, hours, activity signals, photos, and geographic context.

In short, Search Box finds places from a text query and returns results with a Place ID. The Places API takes a Place ID and returns the full record for that place. Most apps use both: Search Box to find, the Places API to fill in details.

The Details endpoint of the Mapbox Places API delivers photos via direct URLs, allowing developers to instantly enrich place cards and interactive search results.

In launch countries, every POI on Mapbox Standard carries its Place ID. The GL JS Interactions API reads the ID on tap, and you call the Places API with it to fill your place card. The place card is your own code.