Foursquare MCP server

@pipeworx/foursquare

Foursquare Places API (2025 places-api.foursquare.com) MCP — keyless POI search with categories, address, contact, and rating-ordered results.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1679+ live data sources.

Tools

• searchplaces(query?, near?, latitude?, longitude?, radiusm?, categories?, sort?, limit?)
• getplace(fsqid)
• nearbyplaces(latitude, longitude, radiusm?, categories?, limit?)

Auth

• Platform key: gateway env PLATFORMFOURSQUAREKEY.
• BYO: ?_apiKey= after registering at https://foursquare.com/developers/.

Foursquare's free allowance is 10,000 Pro calls/month.

Ratings are a Premium field (read this before promising a rating)

Foursquare's 2025 API splits response fields into Pro (returned by default: name, categories, address, lat/lon, distance, tel, website, social) and Premium (rating, price, popularity, hours, description, tips, photos). Premium fields only come back when named in fields, and any call that names one bills at the Premium rate — $18.75 per 1,000 calls, no free tier (foursquare.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-19).

Until that spend is approved for public traffic (fleet #2271), the pack requests Premium fields only for internal callers (the gateway injects internalCaller). Every response carries ratingincluded, a ratingreason (included / notrequested / refusedbyvendor) and, when the rating is absent, a ratingnote — so a null rating reads as not requested or withheld by the vendor, never as unrated. sort:"RATING" is honoured by Foursquare either way, so the ORDER is by rating even when the number is withheld. To enable ratings for everyone flip PREMIUMFIELDS_PUBLIC in src/index.ts.

refusedbyvendor is the state you will see until Premium billing is enabled on the platform account. Measured 2026-09-19: naming a Premium field on the unbilled platform key made Foursquare answer HTTP 429 on every call, so a Premium request the vendor refuses (429/402/403) is re-run once Pro-only and labelled, rather than failing the call or pretending the null was unrequested. Once billing is on, the first request succeeds and the retry never happens.

Data source

https://places-api.foursquare.com/places — headers Authorization: Bearer and X-Places-Api-Version: 2025-06-17.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "foursquare": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/foursquare/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/foursquare/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — askpipeworx, discovertools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.