Looking for an alternative to HEAVY.AI?

CARTO is the leading Location Intelligence & GIS platform for cloud natives. See why modern analytics professionals are making the switch.

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Why is CARTO the best Location Intelligence platform?

The leading cloud-native spatial analytics and GIS platform for companies using modern cloud data stacks.

CARTO scales on demand with all data stored within your existing cloud data warehouse. Avoid the cost of expensive GPU server-based infrastructures and wasting time on data transfer or complex ETL. CARTO is a unified platform (available as SaaS, self-hosted and hybrid deployments) - providing an end to end solution for organizations looking to visualize & analyze geospatial data, at scale.

CARTO vs. HEAVY.AI at a glance

CARTO

The cloud-native Location Intelligence platform for teams of all sizes

HEAVY.AI

General and geospatial analytics using GPU accelerated technologies

Connectivity
CARTO

Direct cloud connections with no limitations on multiple data warehouses and databases. All queries are run natively on the data warehouse and no data is stored in CARTO.

HEAVY.AI

Data is stored in the GPU powered database. Connection service to data sources via foreign data wrappers, foreign tables, and foreign servers. Data is replicated in HeavyDB.

Data
CARTO

CARTO Data Observatory provides over 12,000 public and premium datasets from a variety of vetted data providers.

HEAVY.AI

No data offering.

Analysis
CARTO

Analysis is run natively using Spatial SQL directly in the cloud data warehouse environment.

HEAVY.AI

Analysis via SQL statements against the HeavyDB proprietary database.

Map Tiling/Rendering

CARTO

Create cached map tiles using native data warehouse connections in SQL or in the CARTO Workspace UI. Render tiles on the fly within CARTO Builder. Vector tile support and no server callback.

HEAVY.AI

Render tiles using GPU services in Heavy Render. Currently supports raster tiles only. All renders require a callback to the rendering service.

Geospatial Functions
CARTO

More than 100 geospatial functions run natively using spatial SQL, directly in the data warehouse connection.

HEAVY.AI

38 geospatial functions for basic analysis, measurement, relationships, and geometry construction.

Data Enrichment
CARTO

Complete enrichment support for all 12,000+ datasets in the CARTO Data Observatory, including area weighted interpolation.

HEAVY.AI

No data enrichment available.

Cloud-native
CARTO

Fully cloud-native with serverless connections and deployment.

HEAVY.AI

Not cloud-native. Uses a GPU accelerated database hosted within cloud services.

Deployment
CARTO

SaaS cloud hosted or a self-hosted option deployed with Docker Compose or Kubernetes.

HEAVY.AI

Deployments in CentOS, Docker, and Ubuntu. Pre-built versions in AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Vendor Lock In
CARTO

Data is not stored in CARTO, only returned via API. Flexible enterprise pricing plans, with all inclusive pricing.

HEAVY.AI

Data must be stored in the HeavyDB to use Heavy.AI.

API
CARTO

Single API layer used in all platform products.

HEAVY.AI

No API offering. Some Command Line Interface tools.

Open source
CARTO

CARTO uses and contributes to open source libraries such as Deck GL, React, Geoparquet…

HEAVY.AI

Open source version is available with some constraints.

Ready to try it out?

1
CLOUD CONNECTIVITY

CARTO integrates with the leading cloud data platforms and analytics tools, including Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Databricks.

Seamless connectivity to your tools
2
DATA ENRICHMENT

Our Data Observatory makes it simple for enterprise organizations to access thousands of "always-on" public & premium datasets, enhancing their spatial analysis with data such as demographics, POIs, human mobility, financial and much more.

Explore Spatial Data Catalog
3
SPATIAL ANALYTICS

Data Analysts starting out in location analytics or Data Scientists creating machine-learning models can use CARTO’s services (including geocoding, routing, isolines and basemaps) to speed up the process. Workflows let you design, execute and automate analytics using a visual, no-code tool. Carry out analysis from Jupyter notebooks, or run advanced cloud-native analysis with our Analytics Toolbox.

4
SOLUTIONS & VISUALIZATION

Visualization shouldn’t just be pretty maps, it should answer a business question. With CARTO, you can rapidly build Location Intelligence apps or use one of our app templates, providing a solution that your business stakeholders will actually want to use in their day to day, whether it’s for Market Analysis, Site Selection, Out of Home Advertising or Supply Chain Optimization.

WHAT OUR PARTNERS SAY

You're in good company

Market leaders rely on CARTO to solve spatial problems.

Jefferies
Yum

Move from seeing where to understanding why.