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ReviewsIs data.gov actually free?
How free100/100
Value8/10
How these scores work
Free Score (0–100) follows a fixed rubric: cards up front, auto-billing, hard time cutoffs, withheld core features, and paying with your data or attention all deduct points. 90–100 truly free · 70–89 free forever · 45–69 squeezed · 15–44 trial mechanics · under 15 fake or gone. Value (0–10) is editorial: real-world worth of the free offering measured against its paid equivalent. Full rubric on the methodology page.
Yes. It's the US government's own data catalogue — free to download, free to use commercially, and mostly public domain because taxpayers already paid for it.
What it’s worth
Commercial vendors repackage this exact data and charge subscriptions for it.
What you get free
- Hundreds of thousands of federal, state and local datasets
- Census, weather, health, transport, energy and spending data
- A free api.data.gov key covering many agency APIs
- US federal works are generally public domain — no licence fee, no attribution requirement
In practice: an enormous, free, legally unencumbered dataset library — if you're willing to do the cleaning.
Drawbacks
- Wildly inconsistent formats and documentation between agencies
- Dead links and stale datasets are common
- Mostly US-focused
Also paywalled
- Nothing
What the free tier actually gives you
| Card required | No |
| Free ceiling | Unlimited |
| API key needed | Sometimes |
| Bulk download | Yes |
| Commercial use | Allowed |
| Self-hostable | Yes |
| Sleeps when idle | Never |
Same questions, same order, for every listing in Data & APIs — so you can compare them side by side. Deliberately no exact allowances: those change monthly, the shape of the limit doesn't.
Free facts
| Verdict | Truly Free |
| Card required | No |
| Auto-bills | — |
| Account | None needed |
| Limits | None; some agency APIs ask for a free key |
| The real cost | Nothing. It's published by the US government and mostly public domain. |
The catch
No price catch. The catch is condition: it's a catalogue pointing at hundreds of agencies, so formats are inconsistent, some links rot, and 'available' doesn't always mean 'clean'.
The smart play
- Get one api.data.gov key — it works across many agencies instead of one per API
- Go to the agency directly for anything you'll rely on; the catalogue entry can lag the source
- Check the update cadence before building on a dataset — some are live, some were published once in 2019
Common questions
Does data.gov require a credit card?
No — data.gov does not ask for a card to use the free version. Auto-billing: —.
What are the limits of data.gov's free plan?
None; some agency APIs ask for a free key. No price catch. The catch is condition: it's a catalogue pointing at hundreds of agencies, so formats are inconsistent, some links rot, and 'available' doesn't always mean 'clean'.
How do I use data.gov without paying?
Get one api.data.gov key — it works across many agencies instead of one per API Go to the agency directly for anything you'll rely on; the catalogue entry can lag the source Check the update cadence before building on a dataset — some are live, some were published once in 2019
What does data.gov really cost?
Nothing. It's published by the US government and mostly public domain.
Why is data.gov free?
Nothing. It's published by the US government and mostly public domain. Commercial vendors repackage this exact data and charge subscriptions for it.
Is data.gov still free?
As of our last check, yes. Yes. It's the US government's own data catalogue — free to download, free to use commercially, and mostly public domain because taxpayers already paid for it. Free tiers change without notice, which is why every page here carries the date it was checked.
More info — tap to expand
Public domain is the quiet superpower
Works of the US federal government generally carry no copyright, which means no licence, no attribution clause, and nothing to negotiate before putting the data in a commercial product. Very little other data comes this unencumbered — check the specific dataset, since state, local and contractor-produced data can differ.
Treat the catalogue as an index, not a source
data.gov catalogues what agencies publish; it doesn't host or maintain most of it. For anything going into production, find the agency's own endpoint and subscribe to its update notices, so a schema change doesn't quietly break you.
Last checked: August 2026site-wide date · Verdict: Truly Free — no card, no account wall, no meaningful catch. use it and go.
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