---
id: h3
version: "4.5.0"
license: Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 http://www.apache.org/licenses/ TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. Definitions. "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# h3 — Uber's hierarchical hexagonal geospatial indexing system

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 12.1M/mo

## What it is and what it does

h3 is a Python binding to Uber's H3 geospatial indexing system, a C library that converts latitude/longitude coordinates into hierarchical hexagonal grid cells. It lets you discretize geographic space into a multi-resolution hexagonal hierarchy, making it straightforward to bin locations, compute spatial neighborhoods, and perform geospatial aggregations without writing C code yourself.

The package wraps the H3 core library with a Pythonic API, offering multiple input/output formats and maintaining version alignment with the underlying C library in major and minor version numbers. It has no runtime Python dependencies, installs via pre-built wheels on modern platforms, and supports Python 3.10 through 3.14. The library is actively maintained by Uber and widely used for location-based analytics, mapping, and spatial data processing.

Use it for:

- Aggregate location data into hexagonal bins for heatmaps or regional analytics dashboards.
- Find neighboring geographic cells or compute distances between locations using the H3 hierarchy.
- Discretize GPS traces or sensor readings into a consistent spatial grid for deduplication and analysis.
- Build geofencing or location-based services that need efficient spatial indexing without database overhead.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

h3 provides Python bindings to Uber's H3 geospatial indexing library, converting geographic coordinates into hierarchical hexagonal grid cells and performing spatial operations on them.

Yes. h3 is a mature, actively maintained library with zero known vulnerabilities, permissive licensing, and broad platform support via pre-built wheels. Install friction is moderate but well-managed. Use it if you need to bin geographic coordinates into a hierarchical hexagonal grid or perform spatial operations on location data.

## Install

pip install h3
uv add h3
poetry add h3

## Installing h3

Before you install: Medium install friction due to compiled C bindings, but well-mitigated by pre-built wheels for Python 3.10–3.14 across macOS, Linux, and Windows. Active maintenance with a recent release (76 days ago) and 1029 GitHub stars.

License in practice: Apache License 2.0 is permissive; you may use, modify, and distribute h3 freely in commercial and private projects, provided you include a copy of the license and note any changes you make.

Quickstart:

pip install h3

import h3
lat, lng = 37.769377, -122.388903
cell = h3.latlng_to_cell(lat, lng, resolution=9)
print(cell)  # '89283082e73ffff'

Requires Python >=3.10; compiled C extension requires a compatible build environment or pre-built wheel for your platform.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports multiple input/output API formats beyond the basic lat/lng_to_cell example shown in the description.
- Performance characteristics (latency, throughput) for typical geospatial workloads at scale.

## Package facts

- License: Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 http://www.apache.org/licenses/ TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. Definitions. "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: medium
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 12.1M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

hexagonal geospatial indexing, h3 grid cells python, geographic coordinate to hex, hierarchical spatial indexing, geospatial binning library, geospatial, spatial-indexing, gis

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/h3) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/h3/)