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Maps · head to head

Felt vs Foursquare Spatial Studio

Felt logo

Felt

Maps

Collaborative browser mapping with a free non-commercial tier and annual-only paid contracts

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Foursquare Spatial Studio logo

Foursquare Spatial Studio

Maps

The product formerly sold as Unfolded, now a Foursquare platform rather than a standalone company

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Felt has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Felt felt publishes no prices for Professional or Enterprise, so buyers cannot compare against ArcGIS Online or QGIS with hosting without entering a sales process; Foursquare Spatial Studio unfolded no longer exists as a product or a contracting entity, so buyers researching under that name find documentation, pricing discussion and comparison material that no longer applies to what Foursquare sells
  • They diverge on capability: Felt covers Real-time collaboration, Foursquare Spatial Studio covers Browser rendering at scale.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Felt and Foursquare Spatial Studio actually diverge.

Attributes where Felt and Foursquare Spatial Studio differ
AttributeFeltFoursquare Spatial Studio
Starting priceFreeOn request
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWeb

Identical on both: pricing model (quote), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Maps).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Felt

  • Real-time collaboration
  • Drag and drop data
  • Unlimited viewers
  • Field app with offline support
  • Dashboards
  • Live cloud sources
  • API and SDK

Only in Foursquare Spatial Studio

  • Browser rendering at scale
  • H3 spatial indexing
  • Data joins
  • Time animation
  • Map sharing and embedding
  • Cloud data connections
  • Foursquare data access

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Felt

  • An environmental consultancy that needs a client to view and comment on survey results without installing GIS softwarenot Foursquare Spatial Studio
  • A utility field crew collecting asset condition offline and syncing to the same map the office is looking atnot Foursquare Spatial Studio
  • A planning department sharing a proposal map with the public where the viewer count is unpredictable and viewer seats would be uncostednot Foursquare Spatial Studio
  • A team of analysts who each hold data in different formats and want one map assembled in an afternoon rather than a weeknot Foursquare Spatial Studio

Foursquare Spatial Studio

  • A retail property team comparing catchment overlap between candidate sites using hexagonal aggregation rather than drive-time polygonsnot Felt
  • A telecommunications planner visualising a national dataset of measurements in the browser without building a tile pipelinenot Felt
  • An analytics team that already writes deck.gl in-house and wants a hosted environment so non-developers can explore the same datanot Felt
  • A marketing group that wants Foursquare places and movement data joined to its own customer geography in one toolnot Felt

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Felt

  • Felt publishes no prices for Professional or Enterprise, so buyers cannot compare against ArcGIS Online or QGIS with hosting without entering a sales process
  • Paid tiers are annual contract only with no monthly option, which excludes consultancies that need a tool for a single short engagement and forces them to the free non-commercial tier they are not licensed to use for client work
  • The API, JavaScript SDK and live warehouse connections are enterprise-only, so a mid-sized team that wants programmatic access has to buy the top tier rather than pay for one capability
  • Analytical depth is limited: there is no meaningful geoprocessing, topology checking or model building, so Felt sits beside a real GIS rather than replacing one
  • The Professional tier caps data processing at 25 GB a month and map views at 100,000 a month, which are easy to exceed with raster imagery or a public-facing map, and the overage terms are not published either

Foursquare Spatial Studio

  • Unfolded no longer exists as a product or a contracting entity, so buyers researching under that name find documentation, pricing discussion and comparison material that no longer applies to what Foursquare sells
  • Pricing is not published at all, and because access to Foursquare datasets can be bundled into the same agreement, separating the cost of the software from the cost of the data requires explicitly asking for a split quote
  • Much of the visualisation capability exists in kepler.gl and deck.gl, which are free and open source, so the paid product must justify itself on hosting, collaboration and data rather than on rendering
  • Foursquare's core business is selling location data, which means the analytics roadmap follows what makes that data sell, and a customer using only its own data is not the priority segment
  • It is analysis and visualisation, not a spatial database or an editing environment, so organisations still need PostGIS, a warehouse or a GIS for the authoritative data and its maintenance

Pricing, plan by plan

Felt

Free
  • PersonalFree
    • Free forever for non-commercial mapping
    • Map creation, upload and sharing
    • Not licensed for commercial use
  • Professional$undefined/year
    • 10 full-access seats with unlimited viewers
    • 25 GB of data processing per month
    • 100,000 map views per month
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Live cloud sources including Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks and S3
    • REST API and JavaScript SDK
    • AI features

Foursquare Spatial Studio

On request
  • Foursquare Spatial Studio$undefined/year
    • Quoted by users, data volume and which Foursquare datasets you take
    • Cloud warehouse connections on the higher tier
    • Not published

Which should you pick?

Choose Felt if

  • You need real-time collaboration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want drag and drop data.
Felt review

Choose Foursquare Spatial Studio if

  • You need browser rendering at scale.
  • You also want h3 spatial indexing.
Foursquare Spatial Studio review

Questions people ask

Is Felt or Foursquare Spatial Studio better?
Neither clearly leads. Felt starts at Free and Foursquare Spatial Studio at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Felt or Foursquare Spatial Studio?
Felt has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Felt and On request for Foursquare Spatial Studio.
Does Felt or Foursquare Spatial Studio run on more platforms?
Felt runs on Web, iOS, Android. Foursquare Spatial Studio runs on Web.
Can I use Felt for free?
Yes. Felt has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Foursquare Spatial Studio starts at On request.
What is Felt best used for?
Felt is most often used for an environmental consultancy that needs a client to view and comment on survey results without installing gis software, a utility field crew collecting asset condition offline and syncing to the same map the office is looking at, a planning department sharing a proposal map with the public where the viewer count is unpredictable and viewer seats would be uncosted, a team of analysts who each hold data in different formats and want one map assembled in an afternoon rather than a week. Of those, an environmental consultancy that needs a client to view and comment on survey results without installing gis software and a utility field crew collecting asset condition offline and syncing to the same map the office is looking at are not what Foursquare Spatial Studio is typically brought in for.
What can Felt do that Foursquare Spatial Studio cannot?
Felt covers Real-time collaboration, Drag and drop data, Unlimited viewers, Field app with offline support. Foursquare Spatial Studio covers Browser rendering at scale, H3 spatial indexing, Data joins, Time animation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Felt: What does Felt cost?

Felt does not publish prices for Professional or Enterprise. Personal is free but licensed for non-commercial use only.

Foursquare Spatial Studio: Can I still buy Unfolded?

No. Foursquare acquired Unfolded in 2021 and sells the product as Foursquare Spatial Studio. There is no Unfolded contract.

Felt: Can I pay monthly?

No. Paid plans are annual contracts. There is a 7 day trial of Professional.

Foursquare Spatial Studio: Is kepler.gl the same thing?

No. kepler.gl is the free open source visualisation library from the same original team. Spatial Studio is the hosted commercial platform built around it.

Felt: Do viewers cost anything?

No. Viewer access is unlimited on the paid plans, which is the main reason organisations with large map audiences choose it.

Foursquare Spatial Studio: What does it cost?

Foursquare does not publish pricing. Ask for the software and the data licences to be quoted separately.

Felt: Is there a nonprofit discount?

Yes, 30 per cent for verified United States nonprofits, and free access for verified students and classrooms.

Foursquare Spatial Studio: Do I need Foursquare's data to use it?

No, you can load your own, but the commercial proposition is strongest for customers who also want the places and movement datasets.

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