Find the neighbourhoods in England and Wales that best fit your business
Tell Footprint what you sell and who buys it. In seconds it ranks all 7,264 neighbourhoods against your brief and explains each pick in plain English, using official data, competitor data from Google Places and AI reasoning.
Built on official and competitor data:Census 2021Google Places competitorsIndices of Deprivation (IMD)ONS UK Business Counts
We ran Footprint against the real locations of 10 national chains without showing it any of their sites. Its top 200 areas were 3.3× more likely than average to have one. All figures are based on where these chains trade today, not on how well those sites perform. See the evidence →
It starts with every neighbourhood in England and Wales
A real search for a pilates and physio studio, sped up. Footprint checks all 7,264 areas, filters out the ones that don't fit your customer, then reads the shortlist one area at a time.
That's only the first step.
- 1. Searchyou are here
Every area checked, the best explained
All 7,264 neighbourhoods scored against your brief in minutes, with a plain-English reason for each pick.
- 2. Weigh it up
Evidence for your judgement
Check competitors on Google Places, walk and drive-time catchments and high streets, and ask Footprint anything about your shortlist. You make the call.
How Ask Footprint helps → - 3. Track the deal
From viewing to signed lease
Track every unit on one board, check each one before you visit, and learn from every site you open.
See deal tracking →
Ask it anything about your results
Ask Footprint knows your search inside out. Ask which shortlisted area to open in first, why one area outranks another, or what changes if you narrow the age range. It answers from your data, including Google Places competitors you have checked, and shows what it looked at. When it suggests a change to your search, nothing moves until you approve it.
- Which area has the better gap in the Pilates market?
- Which of my shortlisted areas should I open in first?
- What if we only target 25 to 34?
Move faster, and know why
Expansion stalls in two places: the research takes too long, and nobody feels sure enough to commit.
Footprint fixes both.
Whether evaluating new markets or comparing specific areas, Footprint helps teams see the commercial picture more clearly.
For franchisors
Rank where to open next, plan territories that don’t overlap, and track every unit from first viewing to opening day.
For consultants
Run a search for each client in minutes, share a live link they can explore, and hand over a branded report.
For business owners
Planning a second or third site? Paste your website to see where your kind of customer lives, and sign your next lease with the evidence to back it. One-off site reports from £249, no subscription.
How Footprint Works
From brief to shortlist in minutes, not months.
Brief
Paste a website, upload brand documents, or describe your business. Add existing locations to find more areas like your best sites.
Score
Footprint understands your business, and builds search criteria. Review, refine, then let it do the rest.
Deliver
Explore tiered areas on the map, refine your shortlist, track deal progress and export a white-label report.
From shortlist to signed lease
Most expansion teams find the right area, then lose weeks to spreadsheets and email chains. Footprint keeps the whole deal in one place, so you get to a signed lease sooner, with the evidence behind every decision.
- Track every unit. Viewings, offers, heads of terms and fit-out on one board, with the owner and next action for each deal.
- Check a unit in minutes. Paste the address and Footprint pulls together the catchment, nearby competitors, transport, planning constraints, flood risk and crime, with a list of things to check on the viewing.
- Learn from every opening. When a site opens, add it to your estate in one click. Rate how it performs and future searches favour places like your best sites.
Hand over a report, not a spreadsheet
Turn any shortlist into a polished PDF for your board, your client or your franchisee. Key findings, a map and profile for every shortlisted area, a side-by-side comparison and recommended next steps, with your own logo and colours.
Branded PDF reports are included on Pro and Scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
Footprint is an AI-powered site selection platform that helps franchises and multi-site businesses find their best expansion locations across England and Wales. It scores over 7,000 neighbourhoods using Census demographics, business data, transport connectivity, and competition signals.
Describe your business — paste a website, upload brand documents, or type a description. Footprint uses AI to build search criteria, then scores every neighbourhood in England and Wales against that profile. Results come back tiered and ranked with written analysis for each area.
Footprint combines Census 2021 demographics, ONS UK Business Counts, the 2025 English and Welsh indices of deprivation, ONS small-area income and population estimates, police.uk recorded crime, food-hygiene and Overture places data for local competition, transport connectivity data from the Office of Rail and Road, Transport for London, and NaPTAN, plus on-demand Google Places competitor searches. All core datasets are published under the Open Government Licence.
Footprint covers all 7,264 Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) across England and Wales. Each MSOA represents a neighbourhood of roughly 7,000 to 15,000 people, giving fine-grained local insight across the entire country.
Plans start at £369 per month for Core (5 searches/month), £799 for Pro (unlimited searches, branded reports), and £1,899 for Scale (3 seats, shared projects). If you only need one answer, a one-off Site Report is £249 with no subscription: 2 full searches and 30 days of Pro features. No long-term contract required.
No. Footprint is designed for franchise operators, expansion managers, and consultants — not data scientists. You describe your business in plain English and the platform handles the analysis. No GIS software, no spreadsheets, no coding required.
Yes. You can export shortlisted areas as an Excel spreadsheet with all underlying data. Pro and Scale users can also generate branded Word documents with maps, analysis, and AI-written commentary — ready for client presentations or board packs.
Yes. Add one or more of your current postcodes and Footprint builds a "success signature" — a data-driven profile of what your best sites have in common. It then searches the entire country for areas that match that pattern. Tell it which sites are strong and which are weak, and it ranks areas that resemble your best-performing sites.
Experian Mosaic and CACI Acorn are enterprise tools built for large retailers with six-figure budgets. Footprint is built for franchise brands and consultants who need the same quality of location intelligence at a fraction of the cost, with results in minutes rather than weeks.