# H3

Hexagonal hierarchical geospatial indexing system

Repository: https://github.com/uber/h3
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/h3
Homepage: https://h3geo.org
Language: C
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: spatial-indexing, geospatial, uber, h3, hexagon
Last push: 2026-08-20T17:13:47+00:00
Link (homepage): https://h3geo.org
Link (site_page): https://h3geo.org/docs
Link (site_page): https://h3geo.org/docs/api/indexing
Link (site_page): https://h3geo.org/docs/community/bindings
Link (site_page): https://h3geo.org/docs/core-library/restable

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 85/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 60, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3178, "days_push": 13, "days_rel": 104, "gap_med": 99, "n_releases_24m": 6}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6495, forks 613 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:43.816687+00:00)

## What it is
H3 is a hexagonal hierarchical geospatial indexing system developed at Uber, implemented as a C core library with bindings for many languages including JavaScript, Python, Java, and Go. It partitions the globe into hexagonal cells across 16 resolutions, enabling spatial joins, aggregation, nearest-neighbor, and flow modeling on geographic data.

## Use cases
- index latitude/longitude points into hexagonal grid cells
- aggregate and join disparate geospatial datasets at different resolutions
- find neighbors and grid distance between hex cells
- bin coordinates into hexagons for map visualizations
- prepare geospatial features for machine learning
- model flows and shortest paths on a hex grid
- convert between coordinates and cell boundaries/polygons

## When to choose
- you need a hierarchical discrete global grid with hexagonal cells
- you want fast spatial joins or aggregation across datasets
- you need multi-resolution indexing from city-scale to meter-scale
- you want bindings across many languages backed by a fast C core

## When to avoid
- you need exact geometric containment between parent and child cells (H3 only guarantees approximate containment)
- you need precise polygon coverage or raster reprojection rather than point/cell indexing
- you need a full GIS toolkit rather than a grid indexing library

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: geospatial, sdk, cli, developer-tools
- domain: data-science, analytics
- platform: cross-platform, c, python, go, jvm, rust, cli
- tags: hexagonal-grid, spatial-indexing, discrete-global-grid-system, hierarchical-indexing, geohashing, spatial-join, uber, geospatial, maps, algorithms, javascript

## Member repositories
- uber/h3 (main) score 85
- uber/h3-js (sdk) score 88
- uber/h3-py (sdk) score 90

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:43.816687+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:44:30.502073+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/uber/h3 (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:43.816687+00:00, sha 818afc7bd675)
  - homepage: https://h3geo.org (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.849027+00:00, sha 6a4888678e39)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.851550+00:00, sha d307841d6a60)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs/api/indexing (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.853473+00:00, sha d092768f08e5)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs/community/bindings (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.855392+00:00, sha 10e1c4ac3bfb)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs/core-library/restable (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.856984+00:00, sha aec80de293b1)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs/3.x (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.858805+00:00, sha 1e87de5956f1)
  - site_page: https://h3geo.org/docs/installation (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.860823+00:00, sha 636491219640)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/h3-js (fetched 2026-08-29T08:41:20.862466+00:00, sha 5aa87cda5284)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.