Location Drive MCP Server

Query the Location Drive location-data platform from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI client: global POI search, graded building-footprint polygons, brand intelligence, and premium data packs (EV charging, fuel prices, full menus, multi-site hotel rates, multi-year review history) — using your own Location Drive API key, so your plan, quotas, and usage dashboard apply exactly as with direct API calls.

The dataset: 307.8M places across 250 countries and territories, 254.2M A–E graded building polygons, 97 structured fields on every plan — Free included.

Tools

Tool	What it does	Cost
search_places	Search the global POI database by name/keyword — ranked by prominence for general terms, by similarity for specific names	limit per page (default 20); max_results auto-pages and sums the cost
find_nearby	Distance-sorted places around a coordinate (adds distance_m)	limit per page (default 20); max_results auto-pages
brand_locations	Every location of a brand — one country or global — with the total	limit per page (default 20); max_results auto-pages
get_place_details	Full record by ID; request any of the 97 fields via fields — premium packs (menus, hotel rates, EV connectors, fuel, review text) included on every plan; data_note when a requested field has no data for that place	1
get_place_context	LLM-ready summary + structured data (sentiment keywords, not review text) for one place	1
get_review_history	Merged multi-year review text history, duplicates removed, plus sentiment summary	1
scan_reviews	Keyword scan of review text across up to 40 places near a point — matching snippets per place; neighborhood scale	the nearby search (its limit) + 1 per scanned place, reported as api_calls_counted
get_hotel_rates	Compare room rates across booking sites for one hotel	1
get_building_polygon	GeoJSON footprint with A–E accuracy grade	1
find_building_at_point	Reverse lookup: which building contains this coordinate	1
brand_footprint	Store counts, open-now, coverage, avg rating for a brand	1 (summary)
data_coverage	Per-country POI counts and polygon coverage stats	1

All plans receive all 97 fields. Usage is counted per place requested: list tools cost their limit (default 20); single-place and summary tools cost 1. Free keys: 5,000 API calls/month, 20 results per call. A list request is charged its limit whatever it returns, so the list tools never send more than 20 unless you set limit; max_results (≤ 1,000) pages automatically and returns the summed api_calls_counted.

Setup — Local (recommended for individuals)

Get an API key at locationdrive.com → Dashboard → API Keys.

Claude Desktop — add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "locationdrive": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@locationdrive/mcp"],
      "env": { "LOCATIONDRIVE_API_KEY": "ld_live_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add locationdrive -e LOCATIONDRIVE_API_KEY=ld_live_YOUR_KEY -- npx -y @locationdrive/mcp

Cursor / other MCP clients: command npx -y @locationdrive/mcp with the LOCATIONDRIVE_API_KEY environment variable.

Setup — Remote (hosted)

The same server runs hosted at https://mcp.locationdrive.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP) — no install needed. Authenticate with your key as a Bearer header.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http locationdrive https://mcp.locationdrive.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer ld_live_YOUR_KEY"

Cursor — add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "locationdrive": {
      "url": "https://mcp.locationdrive.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ld_live_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Other clients: URL https://mcp.locationdrive.com/mcp with header Authorization: Bearer ld_live_YOUR_KEY.

Try it

Ask your AI client things like:

• "What data coverage does Location Drive have for Japan?"
• "Find restaurants within 1 km of 18.2170, -63.0578."
• "Which building sits at 18.2168, -63.0581, and what's its accuracy grade?"
• "How many Starbucks locations are there worldwide, by country?"
• "List the Starbucks stores in the US."
• "Compare room rates for this hotel across booking sites."
• "How have this restaurant's reviews changed over the past few years?"

Notes

• Every plan receives all 97 fields and every endpoint (API v8): there is no plan gating on fields or tools. Plans differ by monthly API-call allowance (Free 5,000 / Starter 500,000 / Business 5,000,000), results per request (20 / 50 / 100 / 500) and search radius; requests per second are fair-use guidance, not a per-key limiter.
• Review text exists in the data — reviews (current crawl), historical_reviews (earlier crawls), and get_review_history (both merged, de-duplicated). When a requested field comes back missing, get_place_details returns a data_note: nothing was stripped, that place has no data for it. get_place_context carries review_sentiments keyword counts, not review text.
• Review data is per place: there is no city- or country-wide search over review content. For "which places near a point have reviews mentioning X" use scan_reviews — it runs the nearby search, reads up to 40 places' review histories (one API request each; ld_test_ keys are capped at 10 places), and returns only the matching snippets. Keyword matching is a coarse filter over user-submitted text: read the snippets before drawing conclusions.
• Usage is counted in API calls from the request itself: a list tool is charged its limit per page (default 20, capped at the plan's results per request) whatever the page returns, single-place and summary tools cost 1, and scan_reviews costs the nearby search plus 1 per scanned place. Every tool result includes api_calls_counted (from the response body, or the X-API-Calls-Counted header when the body lacks it) — see https://locationdrive.com/docs#api-call-counting.
• A 429 QUOTA_EXCEEDED means the key's monthly allowance is exhausted (the refused request is not counted); it resets on the 1st at 00:00 UTC.
• ld_test_ keys work and return synthetic data without counting against quotas — useful for trying the integration.
• The hosted endpoint adds no rate limiting of its own: your API key's monthly allowance (enforced by api.locationdrive.com) is the backstop, and unauthenticated requests are rejected immediately. Upstream calls time out after 10 s (LOCATIONDRIVE_TIMEOUT_MS overrides).

Development

npm install
npm run build      # compiles src/ and typechecks api/
npm run inspect   # MCP Inspector against the local build
LOCATIONDRIVE_API_KEY=ld_live_x node scripts/smoke.mjs   # live API smoke test

MIT © Location Drive, LLC