shipapis
StarSubmit an APISubmit API

iNaturalist

Species, observations and photos from iNaturalist

🐕 AnimalsDYINGchecked 9 min ago
AUTH NONECORS ✗AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ?

iNaturalist's API exposes crowd-sourced wildlife observations, taxa and identification photos. Read endpoints are public and keyless (OAuth only for posting). Filter by taxon, place or user — ideal for nature-ID apps and citizen-science dashboards.

39HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
Docs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 39 · dying
Uptime history
26.0%90 days
17.2%30 days
1140P50 · ms
1985P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 659 ms, slowest 1860 ms, most recent 810 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa?q=fox&per_page=1

{
  "total_results": 623,
  "page": 1,
  "per_page": 1,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": 42043,
      "rank": "family",
      "rank_level": 30,
      "iconic_taxon_id": 40151,
      "ancestor_ids": [
        48460,
        1
      ],
      "is_active": true,
      "name": "Canidae",
      "parent_id": 41573
    }
  ]
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa?q=fox&per_page=1"
const res = await fetch("https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa?q=fox&per_page=1");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa?q=fox&per_page=1")
print(res.json())

BROWSER CALLS BLOCKED (NO CORS/HTTPS) — USE THE CURL SNIPPET

Endpoints · 6DyingFULL DOCS ↗
Dying — error rate climbing on GET /taxa?q=fox&per_page=11140 mschecked 9 min ago
GET/taxa?q=fox&per_page=1PROBED

Species, observations and photos from iNaturalist

GET/taxa?limit=5

Taxa — documented GET route.

GET/taxa?page=1

Taxa — documented GET route.

GET/controlled_terms

Terms Index

GET/controlled_terms/for_taxon

Terms for Taxon

GET/identifications/{id}

Identification Details

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.

iNaturalist: common questions

Is iNaturalist free to use?

Yes — iNaturalist is a free animals API. Free tier: Free — limits not published. Whether the free tier allows commercial use is unclear — check the provider docs.

Does iNaturalist need an API key?

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 You can call it straight away; rate limits still apply (Unpublished).

Can I call iNaturalist from the browser?

Not directly — iNaturalist doesn't send browser-friendly CORS headers, so call it from a server or proxy instead. Copy the curl or Python snippet on this page to get started.

Is iNaturalist up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, iNaturalist is dying with 26.0% uptime over 90 days and a 1140 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.