Policies

Access

Only access the private information of users who have authenticated with your application

These users will have to explicitly authorize you to view their data and you will need to tell the user what data you are accessing. Learn more

Retention

Refresh your data on a frequent basis.

You’re welcome to cache Foursquare data in order to increase the speed of your application, but we have very specific time limitations on how long you can cache this data. In particular:

• Checkins must be refreshed every 24 hours
• No piece of data can be kept for more than 30 days without being refreshed
• The data of users who haven’t authed your app may only be stored for up to three hours

Privacy

Respect user expectation of privacy.

Your application needs to have a privacy policy. Be explicit in your privacy policy on how you’ll use, store, and disclose user information. For instance, if your app will display your users’ current location or contact information on a public page, they should know this before they authenticate and agree to use your app. Learn more

Attribution

Give credit when due!

If your application uses our platform, you must attribute Foursquare as the source of your data through either general attribution (ie. buttons, our developer logo, etc.) or contextual attribution (ie. woven into copy, etc.). Learn more

Venues Database Usage

For an in-depth description of our venues database usage policies, please see our comprehensive guide.

Rate Limiting

Use of the API is subject to rate limits. The limits are based on a moving window that tracks the number of requests you send per hour. The default limit is 500 requests per hour per set of endpoints per OAuth consumer per authenticated user. We also allow 5,000 requests per hour to the venues/* endpoints when making userless requests. Learn more