List of APIs

Data

Author

François Geerolf

About APIs

An Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface or communication protocol between different parts of a computer program intended to simplify the implementation and maintenance of software. Nowadays, many institutionally provided database are available through APIs.

Below, I introduce you to some of these APIs, but there are actually many more you can use.

source dataset Title Updated
bdf api Banque de France's API - api 2026-09-09
bea api Bureau of Economic Analysis' API - api 2026-09-11
bis api Bank of International Settlements' API - api 2026-09-11
bls api Bureau of Labor Statistics' API - api 2026-09-11
dbnomics api DBnomics' API - api 2026-09-11
ecb api European Central Bank's API - api 2026-09-09
eurostat api Eurostat's API - api 2026-09-11
imf api International Monetary Fund's API - api 2026-09-11
insee api Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques' API - api 2026-09-11
oecd api OECD's API - api 2026-08-02
wdi api World Development Indicators' API - api 2026-09-11

SDMX

What is SDMX ?

SDMX is the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange initiative, which is sponsored by BIS, ECB, Eurostat, IMF, OECD, UNSD and the World Bank. Data disseminated in this way is supposed to be structured in similar ways.

SDMX in R

We shall use the rsdmx package to read in SDMX data into R statistics:

  • See the rsdmx quickstart guide. html

Other resources

  • Eurostat explains SDMX. html

  • The official site for the SDMX community. html

  • SDMX REST API: Developers’ documentation. html / Cheatsheet

List of SDMX Providers

You can easily get a list of providers through getSDMXServiceProviders:

Code 
rsdmx::getSDMXServiceProviders() %>%
  as_tibble %>%
  {if (is_html_output()) datatable(., filter = 'top', rownames = F, escape = F) else .}

Examples from providers

OECD

Code 
ig_d("oecd", "api", "IRLTLT01-FRA-JPN-DEU-GBR-GRC-USA")
Source Dataset Updated PNG PDF
oecd api 02 Aug 2026 png pdf

Eurostat

Code 
ig_d("eurostat", "api", "example1")
Source Dataset Updated PNG PDF
eurostat api NA png pdf