1. Home
  2. FAQs
  3. Overview

Introduction

Altitude by Geotab is a line of business and product under Geotab. that delivers aggregate, historical Commercial Movement Insights to support planning for roads, freight, safety and site selection. It serves public and commercial sector decision-makers through a secure web user interface and API.

What is Altitude and How Does it Work?

Altitude by Geotab offers reliable, contextualized mobility insights for public and commercial sectors. It provides aggregate, historical commercial vehicle movement data via a secure web UI and API to aid planning for roads, freight, safety, and site selection.

Altitude turns observed movement into aggregated, anonymized Commercial Movement Insights for planning. Through a privacy-first, PII-safe layer with minimum-count thresholds, it delivers planning-grade metrics, such as corridor usage, Origin and Destination patterns, travel-time distributions, and dwell near POIs. Outputs are historical and up-to-date at geographic or corridor levels (never for individual vehicles or customers). Explore insights in the Altitude platform UI, or integrate them via the API.

When should I use the Altitude API vs the Altitude UI?

While all UI insights come from the API, not all APIs are in the UI. For analysis needing immediate map visualization, tables, graphs, or exploratory data analysis, use the UI. Or, if you are unfamiliar with working with APIs, use the UI to run analysis. For repeated, similar queries, use the API programmatically. If integrating data into a data warehouse or merging datasets, the API is best.

We recommend using the Altitude API for the following use cases:

  • Harsh events

  • Modeled AADT by Road Segment

  • Fuel Economy Statistics by State, County, or City

  • Idle Metrics by Vehicle Years

  • Demand Generation

  • Speed Breakdowns by percentiles more specific than the 50th, 85th, and 95th percentiles

  • Stop Analysis breakdowns exceeding more than 10 percentiles

  • Returning road segments based on a posted speed limit of interest

  • Export data in a GeoJSON or ShapeFile format for ingestion to other platforms

  • Retrieving all zones around a defined point

  • Computationally heavy queries particularly those with rate limits

  • Origin/Destination analysis exceeding Altitude UI Number of Zones Limits

  • Queries that are geographically large in scope

We recommend using the Altitude UI for the following use cases:

  • For non-technical users not familiar with working with APIs who want to run analyses for Regional Travel Metrics, Traffic Analytics, Stop Analytics, or Origin/Destination modules

  • Importing of defined custom zones in a ShapeFile or GeoJSON format

  • Creating a zone manually around a single or few geographic zones of interest, especially where geographic parameters may not be well defined

  • Analysis requiring detailed map visualizations

  • Analysis which may need to be saved and retrieved on a regular basis

  • Analysis which may need to be shared and accessed across an organization

Who is the Altitude Platform For?

Public administration
DOTs, MPOs, cities, counties
Utilities and energy
Electric utilities, charging networks, alternative fuels
Petroleum and fuel retail
Travel centers, C-stores, energy majors
Real estate and infrastructure
Developers, engineering firms, consultants
Next
Industries and Use Cases

On this page

Logo Footer
Logo Footer

Altitude

Log into Altitude PortalAltitude.geotab.comAltitude Help Center

Learn Altitude

Altitude User GuideAltitude API GuideData DictionaryWhat's New

Support

FAQContact Us
Privacy PolicyTerms & Conditions
© Geotab 2010-2026
Altitude LogoHelp Center
User GuideAPI GuideData DictionaryFAQContact Us
Introduction