spotagap
Pharmacies are one of the categories our scoring engine measures most confidently: people use the nearest one they trust, insurance networks matter more than brand loyalty, and demand tracks residential population closely. That makes pharmacy gaps a clean read on where Austin is actually underserved, and the data says it's more than half the metro.
The metro-wide numbers
Austin's benchmark comes out to 1.71 pharmacies per 10,000 residents, the metro's own average across every measurable catchment. Every hex gets compared against that number, not a national figure.
| Verdict | Hexes | Share of scoreable area |
|---|---|---|
| Underserved (below half the metro average) | 523 | 51% |
| Adequately served | 248 | 24% |
| Saturated (well above average) | 254 | 25% |
Four real examples
Narrowing to catchments with at least 15,000 residents and zero pharmacies in reach turns up 66 real locations, more than we found for grocery in the same size band. A few:
- Northeast Austin, near the US-290/Manor Road corridor: about 15,700 residents, zero pharmacies in the catchment (the same gap that shows up for grocery in this area).
- A separate northeast Austin catchment: roughly 17,700 residents, zero pharmacies nearby.
- East Austin, past I-35: roughly 17,000 residents, zero pharmacies in the catchment.
- North-central Austin: about 16,400 residents, zero pharmacies in the catchment.
That overlap is itself a finding: a handful of Austin's fast-growing residential corridors are outrunning basic everyday retail on more than one front, not just one category in isolation. If you're deciding between opening a pharmacy in a saturated part of town or an underserved one, this is the kind of number that should change the decision, and it's the same number the app will show you for grocery, gas, salons, or any of the other 180 categories it tracks, for Austin or any other US city it has scored.