What is CARTO used for?

CARTO is a cloud-native location intelligence platform for spatial analysis, visualization and app development on top of a company's own cloud data. It is a good fit for choosing store or network sites with spatial analysis, analyzing logistics or insurance risk by location and building location apps on a cloud data warehouse.

How much does CARTO cost?

CARTO doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request. A free trial is available. No prices are published. Pay As You Go is metered by usage and three committed annual tiers (Enterprise, Strategic, Custom) are quoted by sales; a 30-day free trial is available.

Is CARTO open source?

No. CARTO is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. In the Maps & Navigation category, open-source options include OpenStreetMap, Organic Maps and Dawarich.

What are some alternatives to CARTO?

CARTO competes with ArcGIS, Felt and Mapbox.

CARTO: features, pricing and alternatives

About CARTO

CARTO is a cloud-native spatial analytics and GIS platform that presents itself as an agentic GIS platform. It is built so that spatial data stays inside the customer's own cloud data warehouse, with no ETL step and no separate data silo. It connects to Google Cloud BigQuery, AWS, Azure, Snowflake, Databricks and Oracle.

The platform covers visualization, analytics, app development, data enrichment and AI agents in one product for data analysts, data scientists, GIS professionals and developers. The analytics side offers a low-code, drag-and-drop interface with more than a hundred analysis components. Solutions are organized by industry, use case and role, including site selection, logistics, insurance and retail. It is a hosted commercial platform with a free trial and a demo option.

Key features

Spatial data that stays in your own cloud
Low-code analytics with drag-and-drop components
Map visualization of spatial data
App development tools for location features
Data enrichment and AI agents
Connectors for BigQuery, Snowflake and Databricks

Good fit for

→Choosing store or network sites with spatial analysis
→Analyzing logistics or insurance risk by location
→Building location apps on a cloud data warehouse

Tags: gis; location-intelligence; spatial-analytics; cloud-native; data-warehouse; visualization; bi

CARTO: questions and answers

What is CARTO used for?: CARTO is a cloud-native location intelligence platform for spatial analysis, visualization and app development on top of a company's own cloud data. It is a good fit for choosing store or network sites with spatial analysis, analyzing logistics or insurance risk by location and building location apps on a cloud data warehouse.
How much does CARTO cost?: CARTO doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request. A free trial is available. No prices are published. Pay As You Go is metered by usage and three committed annual tiers (Enterprise, Strategic, Custom) are quoted by sales; a 30-day free trial is available.
Is CARTO open source?: No. CARTO is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. In the Maps & Navigation category, open-source options include OpenStreetMap, Organic Maps and Dawarich.
What are some alternatives to CARTO?: CARTO competes with ArcGIS, Felt and Mapbox.