what3words Revenue and Usage Statistics (2023) (2024)

FAQs

How does what3words make money? ›

what3words is free for anyone to use via our app and online map. We make money by charging some businesses that benefit commercially from using our products. For example, what3words built into Mercedes-Benz's cars improves the customer experience for its drivers.

From a what3words perspective, the 3 word addresses are 100% fixed in their location on the planet. This can be confusing if your device can't make up its mind about where exactly you are located.

What3Words is a navigation startup that began life as a consumer product, but pivoted to B2B. A major milestone was signing Mercedes-Benz as a client in February 2019. While now boasting 100 employees, What3Words does not anticipate adding new staff over the next 12-24 months and is instead focused on profitability.

Since 2019, What3words has seen adoption by emergency services, who can use it for free and frequently promote the app on social media. As of September 2021, more than 85 per cent of British emergency services teams use What3words, including the Metropolitan Police and London Fire Brigade.

“When someone calls 911 from a cell phone, the dispatchers will be provided with not only address and coordinate information, but the what3words location as well,” Eubanks said. Emergencies can happen anywhere.

what3words is owned by its founders, employees and investors, including Intel Capital, Mercedes-Benz, Sony Innovation Fund, Subaru, Aramex, Deutsche Bahn, Ingka Investments, ITV AdVentures Invest and Channel 4 Ventures.

New York-based IamResponding, which sells emergency response technology, says it has teamed with location technology provider what3words to boost location data for first responders.

what3words is used by over 85% of the UK's Police, Ambulance and Fire services, and has become a valuable and trusted tool in the emergency response toolkit. The technology has been used in thousands of situations, from reporting fires and rescuing pets to locating callers mid-heart attack with pinpoint accuracy.

On a smartphone, simply enter the what3words address into the free what3words app, then tap 'Navigate' and select 'Google Maps' to open the location in Google Maps. Did this answer your question?

what3words provides a simple way to communicate precise locations, and across the US the technology has been successfully used by 911 teams for everything from reporting fires and rescuing pets, to locating injured hikers and lost kayakers with pinpoint accuracy.

Who is the CEO of what3words? ›

Chris Sheldrick - Co-founder & CEO - what3words | LinkedIn.

Every 3m square of the world's seas and oceans have what3words addresses in English and in Korean. All other what3words languages cover land and coastline areas only.

Navigating via the what3words app

You can also simply enter your destination's what3words address into the what3words app, then tap 'Navigate' to get directions in your favourite apps such as Google Maps, Waze or Navmii.

Kiribati is the eight country to adopt what3words as an addressed standard, along with Mongolia, Sint-Maarten, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Tonga, Nigeria and Solomon Islands.

what3words addresses are as accurate as GPS coordinates, but they are easier to remember, and quicker to say over the phone, or enter into a device by voice or text.

The basics

As a reminder, we have split the world into a grid of 3 metre x 3 metre squares, and each of those squares has been assigned an address made up of 3 words. There are around 57 trillion such squares.

From a what3words perspective, the 3 word addresses are 100% fixed in their location on the planet. This can be confusing if your device can't make up its mind about where exactly you are located.

Enter a place name or street address into the search bar and choose the correct result. Switch to satellite mode and zoom in until you see the grid. Tap on a square to see its what3words address.

what3words can be used in China via a dedicated China-specific app and online map that are configured to work with the Chinese coordinate system. Our online map and 三词地址 Android app use maps provided by AutoNavi, while the 三词地址 iOS app uses Apple Maps.

Does what3words track? ›

We cannot (and would not) track your movements – we only receive data on squares you open/click on or 3 word addresses that you search for when using our services (so that we can give you the relevant 3 word address or location).

Our Website and Apps are made available free of charge to use (whether for personal use or for business use). We want people to be using 3 word addresses as a way of communicating location.

We recommend waiting for a few seconds after opening the app, allowing the blue dot (which shows where your device thinks you are) to settle close to one place, then tapping 'Locate me'.

what3words addresses are easy to remember and to say over the phone or radio. They're also quicker and easier to type than a regular street address. They're designed for speech recognition technology, making them easy to input correctly into voice-enabled devices or vehicles.

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), paramedics, firefighters, and police officers are all considered first responders.

Google Maps is a tool for navigation, public transport and for looking up POIs. what3words has a very different function – it's an easy way to communicate exact locations, whether that's spoken over the phone or into a car voice navigation system, or typed into a taxi app or a website checkout page.

Without phone signal, the app functions the same as when you have no data connection: you can view the location of any what3words address you enter. You can also navigate to it using compass mode. To share a what3words address over the phone or in a text message you need phone signal.

Get directions to a 3 word address

Click the 'Navigate' icon. 2. This will open an Apple Maps window with directions to that 3 word address.

what3words addresses can be used easily even by people who don't have the app. Simply send them the what3words address as a link e.g. what3words.com/filled.count.soap, so they can view the location on what3words.com.

what3words addresses are fixed and will never change. That's how what3words is able to work offline and needs no updates or database. We know a lot of people would like to personalise the words in their addresses, but this can't be done.

How many combinations does what3words have? ›

The English language is composed of 171,476 words, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary. What3words removed any hyphenated words, curse words, and hom*ophones. That left the team with 40,000 words, which composed some 64 trillion unique three-word combinations.