About Open Data Finder

Governments, cities and public agencies publish a huge amount of open data, but it is spread across hundreds of separate portals, each with its own search. Open Data Finder puts their catalogs behind one search box so you can find a dataset without knowing which portal holds it.

Where the information comes from

The dataset titles, descriptions, tags, formats and licenses shown here are metadata from public government open-data catalogs (for example national data portals and the Socrata network of city and state portals). We collect it from their public catalog APIs and refresh it periodically. When a portal stops listing a dataset, its page here says so.

The sources list also tracks individual public data APIs. Each one is checked regularly, so you can see whether it is answering before you rely on it.

Live previews

For datasets on portals with a query API, the dataset page shows the first rows. Those rows are fetched live from the source when you open the page (and kept for up to an hour), so they are exactly what the publisher serves.

We link, we don’t host

Open Data Finder does not copy or host the data itself. Every dataset links to its page at the source, where you will find the full data, documentation and the publisher’s license terms. Check those terms before you reuse the data.