Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is OnCoord?
OnCoord is a geospatial and location intelligence platform built on open data. It provides APIs for geocoding, place search, population analysis, economic activity analysis, terrain intelligence, points-of-interest discovery, and site selection workflows across Latin America.
Developers and organizations use OnCoord to power logistics, mapping, business intelligence, infrastructure analysis, and spatial decision-making applications through a modern API platform.
What capabilities does OnCoord provide?
- Address and place search
- Reverse geocoding and autocomplete
- Population density and nearby population estimates
- Satellite-derived activity and development indicators
- Elevation, slope, and terrain analysis
- POI density and urbanity metrics
- Nearby points-of-interest search
- Business prospecting and site-selection analysis through Dorado
These services can be combined to support applications in logistics, mapping, retail analysis, infrastructure planning, business intelligence, and spatial decision-making.
What kinds of spatial data does OnCoord provide?
OnCoord provides multiple categories of geospatial intelligence data, including:
- Address and place search
- Reverse geocoding
- Points of interest (POIs)
- Population density and radial population estimates
- Satellite-derived activity and development indicators
- Elevation, slope, aspect, and terrain profiles
- POI density and urbanity metrics
- Business prospecting and site-selection scoring through Dorado
These APIs are designed to work together so applications can combine search, enrichment, and analysis workflows.
What is Dorado?
Dorado is OnCoord’s location prospecting and site-analysis tool. It combines population density, economic activity, competitor saturation, and spatial scoring to help identify promising business locations and underserved markets.
Dorado is designed for workflows such as retail expansion, infrastructure planning, logistics optimization, and commercial site selection.
What is Activity & Development data?
Activity & Development data uses NASA VIIRS nighttime light imagery to estimate economic activity and infrastructure intensity near any coordinate.
These APIs provide metrics such as radiance, development index scores, and activity levels, supporting applications in:
- Retail analysis
- Infrastructure planning
- Economic monitoring
- Logistics
- Urban analysis
- Regional development studies
What countries and regions are supported?
OnCoord provides geospatial search and intelligence services across Mexico, Central America, and South America, with continued expansion of datasets and regional coverage.
Coverage and available datasets vary by country and feature type.
How do I use the OnCoord APIs?
Most OnCoord services can be explored immediately without creating an account or entering a credit card.
No signup. No credit card. Just try it.
Interactive demos and time-limited trial access are available for many APIs, allowing developers to experiment with geocoding, place search, population analysis, terrain intelligence, activity data, and other geospatial services directly from the browser.
For production applications and higher usage limits, developers can create an account and obtain an API key.
API keys allow OnCoord to:
- Authenticate applications
- Track usage and subscription limits
- Protect the platform from abuse
- Ensure reliable access for all users
Once authenticated, developers can access OnCoord APIs through standard HTTPS requests and integrate geospatial search, enrichment, and intelligence workflows into their applications.
Who uses OnCoord?
Organizations use OnCoord for:
- Logistics and delivery optimization
- Mapping and location search applications
- Population and market analysis
- Infrastructure planning
- Site selection and business prospecting
- Terrain and environmental analysis
- Spatial business intelligence
- Urban and regional analysis
Is the data free to use?
OnCoord offers a free tier for evaluation and limited usage, along with paid plans for commercial and higher-volume applications.
Some datasets used by OnCoord originate from open-data providers that may require attribution if results are publicly redistributed or displayed. Please review the Data Sources page for licensing details.
Do you enforce rate limits?
Yes. OnCoord applies rate limits to ensure fair usage, maintain system stability, and protect the platform from accidental or abusive overload.
Limits vary by subscription plan and may include:
- Requests per second
- Daily or monthly request quotas
Normal applications — including web, mobile, analytics, and batch-processing workflows — typically operate comfortably within these limits.