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Archive.org

Metadata and file listings for Internet Archive items

📚 Open DataHEALTHYchecked 5h ago
AUTH NONECORS ✓AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ?

The Internet Archive's metadata endpoint returns everything it knows about an item: its files, formats, checksums, servers and descriptive fields, all as JSON. Just append an item identifier to /metadata/ — no key, no signup. Handy for building on top of the Archive's books, audio, video and web collections.

65HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
▶ Run liveDocs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 65 · healthy
Uptime history
97.1%90 days
96.7%30 days
813P50 · ms
2764P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 169 ms, slowest 2145 ms, most recent 698 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://archive.org/metadata/nasa

{
  "created": 1782843816,
  "d1": "ia601607.us.archive.org",
  "d2": "ia801607.us.archive.org",
  "dir": "/6/items/nasa",
  "files": [
    {
      "name": "__ia_thumb.jpg",
      "source": "original",
      "size": "5399",
      "format": "JPEG Thumb"
    }
  ]
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://archive.org/metadata/nasa"
const res = await fetch("https://archive.org/metadata/nasa");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://archive.org/metadata/nasa")
print(res.json())
Endpoints · 6HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /metadata/nasa813 mschecked 5h ago
GET/metadata/nasaPROBED

Metadata and file listings for Internet Archive items

GET/metadata

Schema or metadata descriptor.

GET/metadata/1

Metadata details by ID (example: 1).

GET/metadata?limit=10

Schema or metadata descriptor.

GET/metadata/search?q=test

Search by query parameters.

GET/metadata/principleofrelat00eins/

Schema or metadata descriptor.

Machine-readable spec

We probe a documented GET and expect 2xx JSON — full uptime and health score. Export includes every documented route below.

Response-shape history

Stable. No schema drift observed since monitoring began — the response shape has not changed under our checks.

Archive.org: common questions

Is Archive.org free to use?

Yes — Archive.org is a free open data API. Free tier: Free — limits not published. Whether the free tier allows commercial use is unclear — check the provider docs.

Does Archive.org need an API key?

No — Archive.org needs no API key or signup. You can call it straight away; rate limits still apply (Unpublished).

Can I call Archive.org from the browser?

Yes — Archive.org returns CORS headers over HTTPS, so front-end code can fetch it directly with no backend proxy. Use the fetch snippet on this page, or hit "Run live" to try it now.

Is Archive.org up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, Archive.org is healthy with 97.1% uptime over 90 days and a 813 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.