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USGS Water Services

Live streamflow and gauge readings for US waters

🔭 Science & SpaceHEALTHYchecked 12h ago
AUTH NONECORS ✓AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ✓

USGS Water Services exposes instantaneous and historical measurements from thousands of stream, lake, and groundwater sites across the United States. Query by site number and parameter code (like 00060 for discharge) and receive WaterML-flavored JSON. Public-domain data with no signup required.

81HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
▶ Run liveDocs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 81 · healthy
Uptime history
87.3%90 days
83.3%30 days
828P50 · ms
4855P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 214 ms, slowest 2953 ms, most recent 332 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=all

{
  "name": "ns1:timeSeriesResponseType",
  "declaredType": "org.cuahsi.waterml.TimeSeriesResponseType",
  "value": {
    "queryInfo": {
      "criteria": {
        "locationParam": "[ALL:01646500]",
        "variableParam": "[00060]"
      }
    },
    "timeSeries": [
      "… discharge readings for USGS site 01646500 (truncated) …"
    ]
  }
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=all"
const res = await fetch("https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=all");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=all")
print(res.json())
Endpoints · 3HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=all828 mschecked 12h ago
GET/iv/?format=json&sites=01646500&parameterCd=00060&siteStatus=allPROBED

Live streamflow and gauge readings for US waters

GET/iv/?limit=5

Iv — documented GET route.

GET/iv/?page=1

Iv — 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.

USGS Water Services: common questions

Is USGS Water Services free to use?

Yes — USGS Water Services is a free science & space API. Free tier: Free — no API key required. Commercial use is allowed on the free tier.

Does USGS Water Services need an API key?

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

Can I call USGS Water Services from the browser?

Yes — USGS Water Services 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 USGS Water Services up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, USGS Water Services is healthy with 87.3% uptime over 90 days and a 828 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.