About this API
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is an international organisation of 38 member countries that publishes comparable economic and social statistics. Its API is built on the SDMX standard: you address a request to a specific dataflow and series key, and retrieve the results as SDMX-JSON, SDMX-ML or SDMX-CSV. It is the same mechanism behind the official OECD Data Explorer — after selecting data there, the "Developer API" button reveals the ready-made query URL.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an API key?
No — the API is public and free, with no registration and no key. The OECD applies only rate limiting to keep the service responsive.
What data does this API return?
Thousands of OECD statistical series — economic indicators (GDP, inflation, trade), labour market, public finance, demographics and environment — comparable across member countries and filtered by country, period and the other dimensions of each dataset.
Can this API be called directly from a browser?
Technically yes — the API returns a CORS header that permits calls from the browser. We do not provide a live "Try it" button here, though, because SDMX-JSON responses are very verbose (dimension metadata, coded values) and are not suited to a readable inline preview — in practice this data is processed server-side or with a dedicated SDMX client.
Who runs this API?
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), an international organisation based in Paris. Data is provided under the OECD Terms and Conditions (with CC BY 4.0 as the default licence for content published since July 2024). Documentation and the data explorer: data-explorer.oecd.org.