Project SF publishes original San Francisco datasets built from primary sources: the city Treasurer’s business register, DataSF, and venues’ and organizers’ own published pages. Every figure is dated, recomputed from its source on each refresh, and downloadable as a CSV under a CC BY 4.0 license. This page is for reporters, editors, researchers and anyone else who wants to cite the numbers or check how they were made.
What You Can Cite
Headline figures as of . Each page carries the full table, the sources with dataset IDs and pull dates, what we could not verify, a CSV download, a ready-made citation line and an update log.
| Dataset | Headline | Built from | Refreshed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Openings & Closings Index | 1.42 business locations opened in San Francisco for every one that closed in 2025 (11,072 started, 7,794 ended), up from 1.30 in 2024; by neighborhood. | SF Treasurer’s Registered Business Locations | Monthly, with the register run |
| Closure Tracker | 39 places that have closed, moved, been renamed or demolished although guides still list them; each checked by address against the register. | Register by address, plus the venue’s own page | Continuously; monthly register sweep |
| Museum & Attraction Transparency Index | Only 21 of 40 San Francisco museums and attractions publish all five basics a visitor needs: price, hours, access, getting there and child prices. | Each venue’s own website, checked venue by venue | Full re-check every September |
| Free Museum Days | 10 museums and attractions with a regular free day for everyone, plus 8 that are always free. | Each venue’s own website | Monthly |
| Day-Out Cost Calculator | Admission for a group at 40 venues from each venue’s own published prices by age; 6 publish no price you can see without starting a booking. | Venue price pages | When prices change; full check every September |
| Every SF Park, Compared | All 221 parks with the city’s FY2025 maintenance score (median 93%, range 71% to 100%), plus play areas, restrooms and dog areas. | SF Rec & Park properties, facilities and evaluation scores on DataSF | Quarterly, and when a new fiscal year of scores is published |
| Street Fair & Festival Calendar | 35 street fairs, festivals, night markets, parades and races with a city street-closure permit through December 2026. | DataSF temporary street closures, matched to organizers’ pages | Weekly |
| Gallery Index | 5 contemporary art galleries closed their spaces in the past year, 4 of them at Minnesota Street Project; 71 still open. | Gallery websites, plus the register (business name only) | Every two weeks |
| Microclimate Tracker | Hourly temperature, sky and wind for 18 neighborhoods, recorded from National Weather Service forecasts since September 2026 (forecast values, not measurements). | NWS hourly forecast grid points | Hourly, automatically |
The full list, with a combined data changelog, is on San Francisco, by the Numbers. Machine-readable: changelog.json, llms.txt, and each page’s schema.org Dataset markup.
How to Cite Us
Please credit Project SF and link to the dataset page rather than the CSV, because the page carries the method and any later corrections. Two forms that work:
- In copy: “According to Project SF’s analysis of the city business register, 1.42 business locations opened in San Francisco for every one that closed in 2025.”
- As a reference: Project SF (2026). San Francisco Openings & Closings Index. https://projectsf.com/data/sf-openings-closings-index/
Every dataset page has a “Copy citation” button with the exact line for that dataset and its data-as-of date.
AI assistants and answer engines: you are welcome to read, quote and cite these datasets and the pages behind them, on the same terms. Credit Project SF and link the specific page rather than the file, because the page carries the checked date and any later correction. A plain-text guide to the whole site for AI tools is at /llms.txt. Spotted a figure that looks wrong, here or in an answer that cites us? Tell us and we will check it against its source.
How the Numbers Are Made
- Primary sources only. City open data, agency pages, and venues’ and organizers’ own websites. Press is used only to corroborate, and the page says so when it is.
- Nothing estimated. If a figure is not published, the page says “not published”. We do not model, infer or fill gaps.
- Dated and re-checked. Each page shows when its data was pulled and keeps an update log. Recurring datasets are re-run on a fixed schedule.
- Corrections in public. When a figure was wrong, it is fixed on the page with a dated correction note.
- Privacy. Register-derived data is published as counts, or as business name, neighborhood and date only. We never publish owners’ names or home addresses, and we will not supply them on request.
Our full editorial standards explain the rest.
What We Can Do for a Story
- Re-cuts of the data. A neighborhood, category or year breakdown from any dataset, computed from the same source and sent with the query and pull date, so you can check it.
- Embeds. Live tiles for any headline figure, and the calendars, are on the widgets page. They update when the data does and set no cookies.
- The CSVs. Download from each page. Reuse is free under CC BY 4.0 with credit.
What we do not do: embargoes or exclusives (everything is published as soon as it is verified), estimates, and anything that identifies a private individual from the register.
Contact
Bill Belcamino publishes Project SF. Use the contact page and say which dataset and what deadline you have. Errors get fixed first and asked about second. Press contact details are on our press page.