Many South African municipalities struggle to plan effectively for service delivery due to fragmented data, limited community engagement and a lack of tools to test different scenarios before making decisions. The Service Delivery Simulator (SDS) was developed to address this gap and is a web-based tool that helps local governments use data more effectively in planning. It brings together demographic, socio-economic and infrastructure data from multiple sources and allows officials and community members to simulate where new services or infrastructure should be placed. This makes it easier to plan based on real needs and local input.