API Overview

Most world data APIs give you one thing — countries, or airports, or timezones — and leave you to stitch them together yourself. World Data API is different: it's a single, interconnected dataset where everything links together.

A country knows its currency, languages, and timezones. An airport knows its city, region, and local timezone. A currency knows which countries use it. You can start anywhere and traverse to wherever your application needs to go.

The API splits naturally into two categories.

Reference endpoints return structured data from standardized datasets — countries, currencies, airports, and so on. These are lookups: you ask for a resource, you get it back. The data changes infrequently and is available on the free tier.

Computed endpoints calculate results on demand. Sun and moon positions for a specific location and date. Business days between two dates accounting for local holidays. These require more processing and are part of the premium tier.

Everything in the free tier works with anonymous access. Premium endpoints require an API key from the dashboard.

We don't invent identifiers. Every resource uses established international standards:

This means our data integrates cleanly with other systems. An airport code from a booking system will match ours. A currency code from a payment processor will, too.

All endpoints are prefixed with /v1. We treat this version as a contract: no breaking changes without a new version number and plenty of advance notice. Adding new fields, endpoints, or changing reference data isn't a breaking change — in fact, this is most likely the reason you may be using World Data API — we handle the living standards and their datasets for you, in a non-breaking manner.

Reference data (countries, currencies, airports, etc.) changes infrequently — caching responses for several hours is safe. Computed endpoints like astronomy are date-specific, so cache based on the query parameters.

If you haven't already, the Quickstart will get you making requests in under a minute. Otherwise, the Concepts section covers authentication, pagination, and how to traverse relationships — or jump straight to the API Reference for any resource that interests you.