Free APIOpen DataNo keyOfficial
GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)
Billions of species occurrence records, free and keyless to read
GBIF aggregates open biodiversity data from museums, herbaria, citizen science and research worldwide: species taxonomy, distributions, and billions of georeferenced occurrence records. The REST/JSON API offers name matching, species lookup, and real-time occurrence search. Reading is fully free and keyless; only large asynchronous downloads require a free account.
Free tier
Free, no key (account only for bulk downloads)Rate limits
Not published; search APIs may return HTTP 429 under heavy load, so use the download API for bulkAuth
No keyBase URL
https://api.gbif.org/v1What you'd build with it
- Resolve a common/scientific name to a canonical taxon key
- Map species occurrence records for an ecology or conservation app
- Enrich a nature/wildlife assistant with distribution data
- Validate and normalize species names in a data pipeline
Key endpoints
- GET
/occurrence/search?q={query}Search occurrence records with filters - GET
/species/match?name={name}Fuzzy-match a name to the GBIF backbone taxonomy - GET
/species/{key}Species/taxon detail by key - GET
/occurrence/{key}Single occurrence record
Members
Members get the runnable recipe
Sign in free to copy the example request, see a sample response, and read the gotchas.
Tags
sciencebiodiversityopen-datageo