Comparing HERE Isoline API vs TravelTime Isochrone API

An isochrone map shows the geographic area reachable within a given travel time from a specific location, factoring in real-world transport networks and routing options.

This makes them a more powerful demonstration of location and proximity of than simple radius areas, which ignore road layout, traffic, and public transport.

Several providers offer isochrone or isoline APIs: Mapbox, TravelTime, HERE, and TomTom among them. But they differ significantly in capabilities, use cases, and pricing.

It can therefore be challenging to determine which one is best for your use case. This article compares two players in the location intelligence space: HERE Isoline API and TravelTime Isochrone API.

HERE vs. TravelTime Overview

Both HERE and TravelTime offer powerful geospatial tools. But they specialise in different areas of location intelligence and serve different purposes.

As a general rule, HERE is designed for routing and navigation. It has dedicated solutions for automotive services and fleet management and best for organisations that need to understand and optimise driving routes as the number 1 priority.

HERE delivers an Isoline API – not an Isochrone API. Crucially, this means that users can only get the singular time line around a location e.g. every location that is 10-minute drive away from location A represented as a polygon outline.

TravelTime Isochrone API is built for advanced location analysis, planning, and search. It delivers an area with all reachable locations within a given time – not just the outline of an area. It includes full multimodal support and deeper spatial functionality, with fixed pricing and enterprise-ready integration options.

If you're seeking a tool specifically for time-based location analytics—especially in urban or multimodal contexts—TravelTime is the more specialised solution.

Isochrone Transport Options

The HERE Isoline API supports driving, walking, and cycling transport modes. TravelTime Isochrone API supports all these modes plus public transit, including models for bus, train, metro, and ferry routes.

This is one of the most significant differences between the two time map providers.

Why are public transport isochrones important?

In cities, public transport is often the primary mode of travel. Excluding it—like HERE does—means leaving vast parts of real-world travel behaviour out from the equation.

TravelTime allows planners, analysts, and developers to work with the full transport network, not just roads. This gives users a better understanding of a location and its real-world accessibility to other places and meets the needs of a wider variety of use cases – ensuring flexibility for users.

This makes it ideal for urban planning, real estate catchment analysis, sustainable transport modelling, and retail site selection.

Maximum Travel Times

HERE caps isolines at 1 hour of travel time. In contrast, TravelTime supports up to 4 hours across all modes, including public transport.

Why do longer catchments matter?

In many industries, organisations needs to understand travel patterns and catchment zones larger than 60 minutes. For example:

• National or regional logistics planning
• Remote workforce commute analysis
• Destination marketing and tourism
• Long-distance real estate analysis

Restricting time-based polygons to just 1 hour can miss crucial insights. TravelTime enables broader, deeper analysis, even at national or regional scale.

Isochrone Shape Granularity and Flexibility

Both APIs offer adjustable isochrone shape detail levels.

However, HERE does not provide the same level of detail in isochrone calculations as TravelTime. TravelTime provides more control, supports shape intersections and advanced spatial formats like H3 and GeoHash.

It’s also possible to smooth TravelTime shapes - simplifying the polygon’s level of detail when it’s needed

What are the benefits of adjustable granularity?

Being able to adjust the level of detail of an isochrone has several benefits for businesses using isochrone APIs.

• Accuracy: TravelTime isochrones better match the real transport network
• Credibility: High levels of customisation prevent misleading shapes e.g. polygons extending over rivers or mountains
• Precision analysis: Particularly valuable in dense urban areas or regions with fragmented transport networks

Test the granularity levels in TravelTime’s Isochrone API playground.

API Performance

TravelTime provides a more detailed isochrone calculation and polygon API than HERE.

There are 10x more datapoints recorded when using the TravelTime Isochrone API because we capture what is within the polygon, not just the polygon outline itself.

This can result in a slower TravelTime API performance when producing 1-hour driving using our standard isochrone API compared to HERE.

TravelTime’s fast isochrone endpoint is also available for those organisations that require speed over granularity.

Commercial Models: Unlimited vs. PAYG Complexity

TravelTime and HERE operate on two vastly different commercial pricing models.

TravelTime uses a fixed-price model that includes unlimited usage, no rate limits, and no restrictions on caching or data reuse. Support is included in all licences, and pricing is built for scale—ideal for enterprise environments and high-volume use.

HERE follows a pay-as-you-go model: $5 per 1,000 isolines, with added costs for support (minimum $450/month or 9% of usage fees). There are usage and caching restrictions, and no public transport or multimodal support included. This makes it a lot harder to scale or budget predictably.

If your use case depends on performance, consistency, and freedom to operate at volume, TravelTime’s model is the more robust choice.

Pricing is correct at time of publishing.

Outputs: TravelTime vs HERE API

HERE outputs isolines in polyline format, which requires additional decoding and processing to truly understand the time-based catchment areas around a start location.

By contrast, TravelTime supports multiple data formats, including JSON, GeoJSON, KML+XML, and WKT formats. This makes it easier for applications to consume the data without additional processing.

Why does API output matter?

The format in which location insights are available impacts how that data can be used, shared and displayed. It’s therefore critical to think about your unique business case.

Easier data consumption: TravelTime’s multi-format options can save developers time and effort and make it easier to integrate the isochrone data into their applications.

Better interoperability: This can be especially important when sharing data between different organisations or platforms.

Better visualisation: Some of these formats, such as KML+XML and GeoJSON, are designed specifically for geographic data visualisation. This means that applications can more easily display the isochrone data on maps or other visualisations, improving the user experience.

More flexible data analysis: These formats can be easily imported into a wide range of analysis tools and platforms.

API Capabilities and Developer Experience

HERE and TravelTime support HTTP requests to generate isochrones. TravelTime supports both GET and POST requests, which makes it easier to configure parameters dynamically and securely.

TravelTime also offers SDKs in:

• Python
• Java
• NodeJS
• Ruby
• R (ideal for data science teams)

HERE SDKs primarily support Java and JavaScript, with less coverage across the data analytics stack.

Final words

Overall, the choice between HERE and TravelTime depends on your specific needs and use case.

If your business requires highly detailed isochrone calculations and polygon APIs, delivered at large enterprise scale, TravelTime may be the better choice. If you’re only looking for an API for routing and navigation, HERE may be the way to go.

Regardless of which API you choose, it's essential to thoroughly evaluate the features and capabilities to ensure that it meets your needs.

Chat to us to get started with TravelTime Isochrone API.