On-demand parking apps have mushroomed like so many other "Uber for ___" services in the on-demand economy. But there's only room for so many of them and they are fighting for both consumers looking for parking spaces and for the businesses that own parking lots and garages and are trying to maximize their revenue while still bringing in as many cars as possible.
Right now, Parking Panda is moving fast to lock up as many parking businesses as possible, offering advanced analytics and other tool to help them figure out the best way to fill up their spaces without having people getting annoyed at not finding out there are no spots until they arrive. ParkWhiz on the other hand, is bringing in plenty of venture capital money and looking to connect parking spot owners with customers, especially during events and is rapidly pushing into new cities. Luxe may have the most funding and SpotHero have the widest spread offerings, but the battle for parking app supremacy is far from over.
We took a look at 11 on-demand parking companies, looking at where they are located, how much money they've raised and anything that makes them stand out besides the fact they offer on-demand parking, check them out:
ParkWhiz
Active in 150+ cities including: Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Miami, New Orleans, NYC, Pittsburg, San Francisco and DC VC raised: $12 million
ParkWhiz was founded in Chicago by Aashish Dalal, Jon Thornton after they started getting frustrated with trying to find a place to park before baseball games and has since raised $12 million. ParkWhiz offers real-time displays of its more than 1,500 vetted parking spots, showing users the closest ones that are open. It provides plenty of information and directions to the spot, and has a partnership with StubHub to help people find parking during events.
SpotHero
Active in 12 cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Newark, NYC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, DC
VC raised: $7.5 million
Founded in Chicago by Mark Lawrence, Jeremy Smith and Lawrence Kiss, SpotHero has raised $7.5 million since 2011. SpotHero offers reserved parking and has deals for cheaper rates at many locations if you use its app to book. It also offers daily and monthly reservations at some of its partner locations.
ParkedIn
Active in 1 city: DC
VC raised: N/A
The newest on our list, still in beta until this summer, ParkedIn has 20,000 parking spots in D.C. and founder Matt Provo has plans for aggressive expansion. It also works as a platform where people who own parking spots can pay to register their places on the app and have others pay to rent the spot from them.
Parkifi
Active in 3 cities: Denver, Boulder, Pittsburgh
VC raised: $3.4 million
Founded in Denver by Ryan Sullivan and Rishi Malik, Parkifi is less about direct customer offerings and more about providing data and management tools to parking lot owners and city managers. The company has raised has raised $3.4 million to help let drivers and parking location managers know about where there are free and open spots and help increase revenue by managing the locations more efficiently.
Parking Panda
Active in 8 cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, NYC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, DC
VC raised: $4.7 million
Founders Nick Miller and Adam Zilberbaum have built Baltimore-based Parking Panda into one of the biggest names in the digital parking world. It offers help to parking lot owners and managers by coordinating among them to send drivers when there aren't many customers and adjusting prices based on demand. It also lets customers pay for parking via their app.
Luxe
Active in 3 cities: San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles
VC raised: $25.5 million
San Francisco-based Luxe has raised $25.5 million for its platform for on-demand valet parking. Founders Craig Martin and Curtis Lee have indicated they plant to use their logistics platform for other services at some point too though. It's also very clearly aimed at people willing to pay for convenience as it styles itself as the best option for those who are too important to spend time looking for parking or who are used to having valet parking everywhere they go.
Smarking
Active in 2 cities: Boston, San Francisco
VC raised: Unknown
Smarking, founded in Cambridge, Mass., by Wen Sang, is aimed at businesses rather than consumers. It offers predictive data analytics and real-time information for the companies, who can then decide whether or not to share that information with customers. has closed a seed round although it has kept private how much money the round involved.
Parkwise
Active in 1 city: Boston
VC raised: N/A
The Boston-based Parkwise bills itself as the "Waze" for street parking for its 1,000 to 5,000 customers. Developed by StreetInfoTech, the app not only shows where there are free spots but also where people are leaving soon, the street cleaning schedule and even snow emergency notifications to help you plan your parking accordingly. Considering the winter Boston just had, that's always going to be useful.
SPOT
Active in 8 cities: Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, DC
VC raised: $1 million
Braden Golub founded the Boston-based SPOT to be a platform to connect people who have parking spots with people who want them and has raised $1 million from investors to do so. Users can rent out their parking spots to others through the app, rather like Airbnb. They can set their own prices, although the company offers some guidance as to how much a spot is worth.
