Data Sources

Last Updated: 2026-08-19

Introduction

Waycarta uses a variety of trusted data sources to power its relocation planning and analysis tools. We combine real estate market data, cost of living indices, geographic reference data, and demographic statistics to give you a comprehensive picture of potential destinations.

This page describes the primary external data sources that power the numbers you see in Waycarta.

Cost of Living

Numbeo

Numbeo is the world's largest cost of living database, with user-contributed data covering thousands of cities across 190+ countries. Waycarta uses Numbeo data for:

Cost of Living Index: Comparative indices that let you see how everyday expenses (groceries, restaurants, transportation, utilities) differ between locations
Property Prices: Residential real estate price data and price-to-income ratios
Quality of Life Indices: Composite scores covering healthcare, safety, pollution, commute times, and purchasing power

Data is updated semi-annually. Current version: 2025 Mid-Year.

Use of Numbeo data is subject to Numbeo's terms of use.

Website: numbeo.com

Real Estate Market Data

Redfin

Redfin is a national real estate brokerage in the United States. Waycarta uses Redfin housing market data to provide:

Home value estimates by ZIP code across all 50 US states
Historical price trends for tracking how housing markets have changed over time

Data provided by Redfin, a national real estate brokerage.

Website: redfin.com

Encuentra24

Encuentra24 is a leading classifieds marketplace in Central America. Waycarta uses Encuentra24 property pricing trend data to provide home value context for:

Costa Rica
Panama

Website: encuentra24.com

Lamudi

Lamudi is an international real estate platform focused on emerging markets. Waycarta uses Lamudi real estate market reports to provide home value data for:

Mexico

Website: lamudi.com

Geographic and Regional Data

Wikidata

Wikidata is a free, collaborative, structured knowledge base maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. All Wikidata content is available under the CC0 1.0 public domain dedication.

Waycarta queries the Wikidata Query Service to build its global geography database, including:

Administrative divisions: States, provinces, departments, and other regional boundaries for 190+ countries
Region hierarchies: How regions nest within each other (e.g., city within county within state)
Capital cities and key geographic properties
Coordinates and population figures for regions worldwide

Website: wikidata.org

GeoNames

GeoNames is a free geographical database covering over 25,000 cities worldwide. The data is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

Waycarta uses GeoNames data for:

City reference data: Names, coordinates, and population for cities with more than 15,000 inhabitants
Administrative code lookups: Standardized codes for states, provinces, and counties

Website: geonames.org

Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, provides supplementary geographic data. Content from Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Waycarta extracts structured information from Wikipedia articles, including:

City lists and population rankings for the United States and internationally
Geographic coordinates for cities and towns

Website: wikipedia.org

HUD–USPS ZIP Code Crosswalk

The HUD–USPS ZIP Code Crosswalk links ZIP codes to census tracts, counties, and metropolitan areas. Waycarta uses it to resolve ZIP codes to geographic regions.

Website: huduser.gov

Overture Maps Foundation

The Overture Maps Foundation publishes open map datasets assembled from many contributing providers and issued as regular public releases. Waycarta uses the Overture Places dataset for the business and service listings shown for a location, including:

Listing names and categories: What a place is called and the type of business or service it provides
Locations: Coordinates and addresses used to place listings within a city or region
Candidate website links: Published links to a business's own website.

Data from the Overture Maps Foundation. Places data is contributed under a range of open licenses, including CDLA Permissive 2.0, Apache 2.0, and CC0 1.0; the per-provider terms Overture publishes at docs.overturemaps.org/attribution remain authoritative.

Website: overturemaps.org

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a free, collaborative map of the world built and maintained by a global community of contributors. OpenStreetMap data is available under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.

Waycarta uses OpenStreetMap data for the business and service listings shown for a location, including:

Listing names and categories: What a place is called and the type of business or service it provides
Locations: Coordinates and addresses used to place listings within a city or region
Website links: Published links to a listing's own website

Website: openstreetmap.org

Demographic and Economic Data

US Census Bureau

The US Census Bureau provides authoritative demographic and economic data for the United States. Census data is in the public domain as a US government work.

Waycarta plans to use data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to provide:

Median household income by state and ZIP code
Income distribution data for comparing the economic profiles of different areas

Website: census.gov

Tax and Immigration

Tax and immigration data comes from relevant sovereign government official sources.

Weather and Climate

Wikivoyage

Wikivoyage is a free, collaborative travel guide. Waycarta uses its climate tables for monthly temperature and precipitation data.

Wikivoyage content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Website: wikivoyage.org

Open-Meteo

Open-Meteo provides weather forecasts using models from national weather services worldwide. Waycarta uses the Open-Meteo Forecast API to provide seven-day daily forecasts for selected destinations, including temperatures, precipitation, wind, UV levels, and general weather conditions.

Open-Meteo API data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0).

Website: open-meteo.com

TerraClimate

TerraClimate is a global dataset of monthly climate data maintained by the Climatology Lab.

TerraClimate data is available under the CC0 1.0 public domain dedication.

Website: climatologylab.org/terraclimate

Travel Advisories

Government Travel Advisories

Waycarta uses official travel advisories from the U.S. Department of State, Government of Canada, and UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

Websites: travel.state.gov, travel.gc.ca, and gov.uk

Internet Connectivity

Measurement Lab (M-Lab)

Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, nonprofit initiative that operates the world's largest open internet measurement platform. M-Lab's NDT (Network Diagnostic Tool) dataset provides billions of speed test measurements contributed by users worldwide. All M-Lab data is released under the CC0 1.0 public domain dedication.

Waycarta uses M-Lab NDT data to power its Internet Connectivity index, which reflects real-world broadband performance for cities globally:

Download and upload speeds (median Mbps) aggregated by city
Latency (round-trip time in ms)
Connectivity tier: Off-the-Grid, Light Browsing, Standard Remote Work, Flawless Remote Work
Index scale: 100 = Standard Remote Work capability

Website: measurementlab.net

Data Freshness

We regularly update our data sources to ensure accuracy. The specific version and date of each data source is tracked internally and reflected in the analyses Waycarta provides.

Contact

If you have questions about the data used in Waycarta, please contact us at hey@velagent.com.

Velagent LLC
137 Montague St #316
Brooklyn, NY 11201
United States