Best Traffic APIs for Developers 2025: Latency Matters More Than You Think

Building a navigation app? Routing platform? Fleet management system? Your choice of traffic API will determine whether your users avoid traffic jams or sit in them.

We benchmarked the major traffic APIs on incident detection latency—the time between when an incident occurs and when it appears in the API. The differences are significant.

The Latency Problem Nobody Talks About

Most traffic API marketing focuses on coverage and features. But here's what they don't tell you: incident detection latency varies by 10x or morebetween providers.

Why the huge differences? It comes down to data sources:

• Crowdsourced (Waze, Google): Wait for users to report → 10-15 min latency
• Probe data (TomTom, HERE): Detect speed changes → 5-10 min latency
• Computer vision (Argus AI): Watch traffic cameras with AI → <10 sec latency

Traffic API Comparison Table

Detailed API Reviews

Why Argus AI Detects Incidents Faster

Traditional traffic APIs rely on one of two approaches:

Argus AI uses computer vision on traffic cameras. Our AI watches 40,000+ DOT cameras 24/7, detecting incidents the moment they happen—not when drivers report them or speeds change.

Integration Example

Here's how simple it is to get real-time incident alerts with Argus AI:

// Subscribe to real-time incidents via webhook
POST /api/v1/webhooks
{
  "url": "https://yourapp.com/incidents",
  "events": ["incident.detected", "incident.cleared"],
  "area": {
    "lat": 40.7128,
    "lng": -74.0060,
    "radius_miles": 50
  }
}

// Or poll for incidents
GET /api/v1/incidents?lat=40.7128&lng=-74.0060&radius=50

// Response
{
  "incidents": [
    {
      "id": "inc_abc123",
      "type": "crash",
      "severity": "major",
      "lat": 40.7589,
      "lng": -73.9851,
      "detected_at": "2025-01-09T14:32:08Z",
      "description": "Multi-vehicle crash, right lane blocked",
      "estimated_clear": "2025-01-09T15:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}