How we research the city guides.
Each guide sets out what it takes to run a bar or nightclub in one city: closing time, licences, tax on the bill, staff wages, the year’s big nights and the nightlife districts. This page explains where those facts come from, who reviews them and how to tell us when something changes.
Reviewed by Adrian Moretti, Customer Success Manager at VenueStack
Where the facts come from
- Laws and regulations, read on the government’s own legislation site.
- Licensing authorities, councils and city halls: their licensing policies, fee pages and guidance for venues.
- Tax authorities for sales tax and VAT, and labour departments and statistics offices for minimum wages and pay by role.
- Statistics offices for population, and official tourism boards for visitor numbers and the nightlife districts.
- Venues’ own websites for their nights, music and published prices.
We never take a fact from a ticketing, booking, listing or review site.
How a fact gets on a page
Every figure is read on its source and linked beside it, and the guide’s Sources section lists them all with the month the data was gathered. When an official page blocks automated reading, a person reads it in a browser. If a fact can’t be confirmed from an official source, it stays off the page, or the guide tells you who to check it with.
Ticket prices and table minimums
Prices come from venues’ own pages. Where no venue publishes them, the guide shows a general estimate drawn from comparable cities and labels it as one.
Top lists
Where capacities are published (Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Washington DC and Boston), the list ranks rooms by capacity. Everywhere else it ranks them by monthly Google searches for the venue’s name with the city, as Ahrefs estimates them, so it measures demand, not size. A room is listed only when its own website or the city’s tourism board shows it open, and concert halls and restaurants are left out. The venues named aren’t affiliated with VenueStack.
District maps
District points come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and are drawn on Google Maps.
Keeping the guides current
Rules and rates change. We re-check a guide when a rule it covers changes.
Spotted something out of date?
Tell us which guide and what has changed. We’ll check it against the source and correct the guide.
Not legal advice
The guides are general information for venue owners and operators, not legal, tax or financial advice. Laws, fees and venues change, so confirm with the relevant authority before acting on anything in them.