USGS APIs
US Geological Survey collection of public APIs covering earthquake data, water resources, national map services, and geological data — each as a separate endpoint collection.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
HTTPS enforced. No authentication means no security model to evaluate. Public data only. Government infrastructure with no published security certifications. No secret handling concerns because there are no secrets.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Accessing authoritative US government geological, hydrological, or earthquake data for research, monitoring, or mapping applications.
Avoid When
You need a single unified API, commercial SLAs, or non-US data. The fragmented nature of USGS APIs requires significant integration effort.
Use Cases
- • Earthquake monitoring and seismic activity feeds
- • Streamflow and water level monitoring
- • Geological hazard assessment and mapping
- • National map tile and elevation data retrieval
- • Environmental research and citizen science integrations
Not For
- • Non-US geographic data
- • Real-time commercial SLA requirements
- • Unified data access (each USGS service has a separate API)
Interface
Authentication
No authentication required. All USGS APIs are fully public. No API keys, no rate limit registration.
Pricing
Completely free government APIs. No pricing structure. Fair use expected; aggressive scraping may be rate-limited.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Not a single API — USGS has 10+ separate service families with different schemas and endpoints
- ⚠ Earthquake API uses FDSN standards; Water Services uses its own schema — agents must handle both
- ⚠ Some services return GeoJSON, others return WaterML, others return CSV — response format varies
- ⚠ No centralized documentation — each service has its own doc site
- ⚠ Informal rate limits not documented; aggressive use may result in IP blocking with no clear feedback
- ⚠ Data latency varies: earthquake data near-realtime, some water data delayed hours or days
- ⚠ Map tile services use OGC WMS/WMTS standards requiring specialized clients
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.