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iDigBio

Search millions of digitized biological specimens

🔭 Science & SpaceHEALTHYchecked 5h ago
AUTH NONECORS ✓AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ?

iDigBio aggregates natural-history specimen records from museums and collections worldwide. Its search API accepts a JSON record-query and returns matching specimens with full Darwin Core fields. A single query can surface hundreds of thousands of catalogued organisms.

75HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
▶ Run liveDocs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 75 · healthy
Uptime history
92.2%90 days
88.3%30 days
1700P50 · ms
3670P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 510 ms, slowest 3318 ms, most recent 793 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://search.idigbio.org/v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=1

{
  "itemCount": 130353,
  "lastModified": "2026-04-23T18:06:26.502Z",
  "items": [
    {
      "uuid": "d957ac64-ce51-4d40-801e-670b345aa7b6",
      "type": "records",
      "data": {
        "dwc:recordedBy": "MacGinitie, H.D.",
        "dwc:occurrenceID": "urn:catalog:UCMP:P:153071"
      }
    }
  ]
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://search.idigbio.org/v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=1"
const res = await fetch("https://search.idigbio.org/v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=1");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://search.idigbio.org/v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=1")
print(res.json())
Endpoints · 6HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=11700 mschecked 5h ago
GET/v2/search/records?rq=%7B%22genus%22%3A%22acer%22%7D&limit=1PROBED

Search millions of digitized biological specimens

GET/v2

V2 — documented GET route.

GET/v2/1

V2 details by ID (example: 1).

GET/v2?limit=10

V2 — documented GET route.

GET/v2/search?q=test

Search by query parameters.

GET/v2/

V2 — documented GET route.

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.

iDigBio: common questions

Is iDigBio free to use?

Yes — iDigBio is a free science & space API. Free tier: Free — limits not published. Whether the free tier allows commercial use is unclear — check the provider docs.

Does iDigBio need an API key?

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

Can I call iDigBio from the browser?

Yes — iDigBio 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 iDigBio up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, iDigBio is healthy with 92.2% uptime over 90 days and a 1700 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.