Look Up City Data in Google Sheets & Excel

What this pulls

Pull population, country and coordinates by the row. Reads a whole column across 150K+ cities — Sheets or Excel.

It's one of 250+ live sources you reach with a single =VERVE() function — served from APIVerve's production data engine, billed at 1 credit per resolved cell, and refreshed on whatever cadence you set. No API keys to wrangle, no scripts, no exports.

See it in a cell

A real example — the input you type, and the values you can pull from it. Click any cell to see the formula behind it.

citieslookup.xlsxsample data

B2fx=VERVE("citieslookup", A2, "field", "search")

City

San Francisco

San Francisco

click any cell to see its formula1 credit / cell

Ways to use it

Enrich an address list

Have a column of places? Fill =VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco") down it to resolve each into structured location data — coordinates, timezone, or region — right in the grid.

Clean location data in place

Normalize messy, hand-entered locations into consistent values without exporting to another tool and importing the result back.

Location-aware calculations

Feed Look Up City Data's output straight into distance, timezone, or cost math with the spreadsheet functions you already use.

Use it in your sheet

The same function works in both apps — install once, sign in with your key, and type it into any cell.

Google SheetsAdd-on

Install from the Workspace Marketplace, then drop the formula into a cell. Autocomplete suggests the source and its fields.

=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco")

Microsoft ExcelAdd-in

Same source, same arguments, same key — in Excel on desktop, the web, or mobile. Excel namespaces it as VERVE.CALL. Drag to fill a whole column.

=VERVE.CALL("citieslookup", "San Francisco")

Optional inputs

Tune the result by adding name=value before the field argument — in any order. Leave one out and its default applies.

limitPremium
Limit number of cities that match your search criteria
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "limit", "5")

Fields you can pull

Add a field name as the last argument to land just that value in the cell.

Search
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "search")
Found Cities
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities")
Found Cities › Name
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.name")
Found Cities › Alt Name
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.altName")
Found Cities › Country
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.country")
Found Cities › Country Name
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.countryName")
Found Cities › Feature Code
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.featureCode")
Found Cities › Population
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.population")
Found Cities › Population Category
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.populationCategory")
Found Cities › Loc › Type
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.loc.type")
Found Cities › Loc › CoordinatesPremium
=VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "foundCities.0.loc.coordinates")

Premium marks data included on paid plans. On the Free plan a marked field is withheld and a marked input is ignored — either way the cell reads #PREMIUM(name) instead of a value, so a gated answer can never be mistaken for a real one. Everything unmarked works on every plan. Compare plans

Look Up City Data, answered

Everything you need to wire it into a sheet.

How do I pull Look Up City Data into Google Sheets?

Install the VerveSheets add-on, sign in once with your key, and type =VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "field", "search") into any cell. The "field" argument names the value you want back, so the cell resolves to a single number or string you can chart, sort, or feed into another formula.

What data can I pull from Look Up City Data?

Look Up City Data returns search, foundCities, foundCities.0.name, foundCities.0.altName and foundCities.0.country, plus 5 more — name any one of them as the "field" argument and that value lands in the cell. Leave the field out and the whole record spills into a two-column table instead.

Can I narrow what Look Up City Data returns?

Yes — Look Up City Data takes "limit" as optional inputs. They go in as "name", value pairs after the required ones, in any order, so =VERVE("citieslookup", "San Francisco", "limit", "5") shapes the result without changing anything else.

Which Look Up City Data fields need a paid plan?

foundCities.0.loc.coordinates is included from the Starter plan up. On the Free plan the cell returns #PREMIUM(field) rather than a wrong or empty value, so it's always obvious which one to upgrade for. Every other field works on Free.

Can I fill a whole column of Look Up City Data at once?

Yes. Put your city values down a column and point the formula at the range — A2:A50 instead of A2 — and one call returns a value for every row. Dragging the formula down works too, but the range form is a single billed call per column rather than one per cell.

How many credits does each Look Up City Data cell cost?

Each resolved cell costs 1 credit. A cell only re-bills when it actually refreshes, so a sheet you aren't touching doesn't keep charging.

Does Look Up City Data work in Excel as well as Google Sheets?

Yes — same arguments, same key, same fields. Excel namespaces custom functions, so the call is =VERVE.CALL() there and =VERVE() in Google Sheets; nothing else about it changes.

How current is Look Up City Data?

It draws on 150K+ cities, served live from APIVerve's production data engine, and cells recalculate on the cadence you choose — every open, hourly, or every 30 minutes.

Look Up City Data

Enrich an address list

Clean location data in place

Location-aware calculations

Look Up City Data, answered

Put Look Up City Data in your next spreadsheet. Add the extension, paste the formula, and the cell keeps itself current.

Scaling up?