The notion of Smart Cities (SCs) has gained significant attention in recent years as cities become increasingly connected, integrated, and technologically advanced. Smart City Platforms (SCPs) are an important element of this movement representing the backbone for collecting, processing and analyzing urban data streams from peripheral devices and systems in a city. This study seeks to identify the key dimensions and characteristics of SCPs. Based on existing literature, we craft a taxonomy following Nickerson et al.’s (Eur J Inf Syst 22:336–359, 2013) guidelines. The resulting SCP taxonomy contributes to the literature on SCs by offering a set of characterizations of SCPs that provide a framework to analyze SCPs and identify types of SCPs.