50 Amazing Free Data Sources You Should Know

Every great data visualization starts with good, clean data. If you don’t already have data you want to work with, where should you start? The reality is that there are thousands of free data sources available, ready to be analyzed and visualized.

You just need to know where to look.

We’ve collected a list of 50 free public data sources that provide information on government, global issues, scholarly articles, social media, marketing, science, journalism, media and so much more. We hope you get the information you need from the following free data sources.

Government

U.S. Census Bureau – The Census Bureau’s mission is to serve as the leading source of quality data about the people and economy of the US, including population data, geographic data, and education.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration  – On the U.S. Food & Drug Administration website, you will find a compressed data file of the Drugs@FDA database. The file is updated once per week, on Wednesday.

U.S. National Center for Education Statistics – The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.

Uniform Crime Reporting – The UCR Program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students, researchers, members of the media, and the public seeking information on crime in the US.

European Union Open Data Portal – The European Union Open Data Portal is the single point of access to a growing range of data from the institutions and other bodies of the European Union.

Eurostat – Here you will find the key to European statistics. Feel free to search by theme or keyword. You’ll learn about the European economy, population, industry, trade, technology, and transport.

UK Data Service – The UK Data Service includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data.

Data.gov – Data.gov is home to the US government’s open data. Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, and design data visualizations.

Data.gov.uk – Data.gov.uk is home to the UK government’s open data. Find data published by government departments and agencies, public bodies, and local authorities.

Data.gov.au – Data.gov.au is home to the Australian government’s open data. The site encourages the public to use government data to analyze, mash-up, and develop tools and applications.

Global Data

The World Factbook – The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues of 267 world entities.

International Monetary Fund – IMF Data offers access to macroeconomic and financial data. Created in 1945, the IMF is governed by and accountable to the 189 countries that make up its near-global membership.

UNICEF Research and Reports – UNICEF gathers evidence on the situation of women and children globally. The data sets include accurate, nationally representative data from household surveys and other sources.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – One of the key tasks of UNODC is to produce and disseminate accurate statistics on drugs, crime, and criminal justice at an international level.

World Health Organization – The World Health Organization provides data and analysis on global health priorities, including world hunger and disease.

Google Finance – Google Finance provides you with up-to-date stock market data, market news, and data on emerging trends. You can also create a portfolio and manage your own stocks.

Google Public Data – Launched in March 2010, the Google Public Data Explorer makes large, public-interest data sets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.

UNESCO – UNESCO contains all the latest available data and indicators, for education, literacy, science, technology, innovation, culture, communication, and information.

World Bank Open Data – The World Bank Open Data catalog is a listing of available World Bank data sets, including databases, pre-formatted tables, reports, and other resources.

World Bank Education Stats – Education is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality. The World Bank compiles data on education inputs, participation, efficiency, and outcomes.

UNICEF Education Stats – UNICEF provides administrative data on school participation, including net and gross enrolment ratios and survival ratios, by educational level.

Open Data for Africa – Here you can visualize socioeconomic indicators over a period of time, gain access to presentation-ready graphics, and perform comprehensive analysis on a country or regional level.

Academic

Google Scholar  – Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature and academic studies.

Pew Research Center’s Internet Project – PEW offers scholars and the general public access to raw data sets from their research. You can track key national, political, economic, and demographic trends in the U.S.

Europeana Collections – Explore 54,165,855 artworks, artifacts, books, videos, and sounds from across Europe.

Science and Health

NOAA’s Science On a Sphere – Science On a Sphere is a large visualization system that uses computers and video projectors to display animated data on the outside of a sphere.

Open Science Data Cloud – The Open Science Data Cloud provides the scientific community with resources for storing, sharing, and analyzing terabyte and petabyte-scale scientific data sets.

HealthData.gov – This site is dedicated to making high-value health data more accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers in the hopes of better health outcomes for all.

National Centers for Environmental Information – This page provides quick access to many of NCEI’s climate and weather data sets, products, and various resources.

The Broad Institute Cancer Programs Data – The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT is committed to meeting the most critical challenges in biology and medicine.

National Weather Service – The National Weather Service holds data on climate changes, including past weather conditions and long-term averages for specific observing stations around the United States.

NASA’s Planetary Data System – The PDS archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements.

NASA’s Earth Data – NASA ESDS Program sets the standard for the delivery of science-quality data related to planet Earth. Search data sets, news, articles, and additional information on their database.

Marketing and Social Media

Social Mention – Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

Google Trends – Google Trends shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world in various languages.

Facebook API – Learn how to publish and retrieve data from Facebook using Graph API.

Twitter API – The Twitter Platform connects your website or application with the worldwide conversations happening on Twitter.

Instagram API – The Instagram API Platform can be used to build non-automated, authentic, high-quality apps and services.

Foursquare API – The Foursquare API gives you access to our world-class places database and the ability to interact with Foursquare users and merchants.

Journalism and Media

The New York Times Developer Network – Search New York Times articles, retrieving headlines, abstracts, and links to associated multimedia. You can also search for book reviews, NYC event listings, movie reviews, and more.

Associated Press API – The AP Content API allows you to search and download content using your own editorial tools, without having to visit AP portals.

Amazon Web Services – Browse Amazon Web Services public data sets by category for a huge wealth of information.

Google Books Ngram Viewer – The Google Books Ngram Viewer is optimized for quick inquiries into the usage of small sets of phrases.

Wikipedia: Database – Wikipedia offers free copies of all available content to interested users. These databases can be used for mirroring, personal use, informal backups, offline use, or database queries.

FiveThirtyEight GitHub – Data and code behind the stories and interactives at FiveThirtyEight.

Miscellaneous

Data sets Subreddit – This popular subreddit offers data sets for data mining, analytics, and knowledge discovery.

Million Song Data set – The Million Songs Collection is a collection of 28 data sets containing audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.

IMDB – This page describes various alternate ways to access IMDb locally by holding copies of the data directly on your system.

Generate Data – Generate Data is a free, open-source tool written in JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL that lets you quickly generate large volumes of custom data in a variety of formats.

Gapminder – Gapminder produces free teaching resources making the world understandable based on reliable statistics. Gapminder promotes a fact-based worldview everyone can understand.

These free data sources are just the tip of the iceberg. We encourage you to continue exploring with data – make amazing data visualizations, find answers to your queries, and discover new questions you didn’t know you had. Sign up for the Infogram newsletter for more data visualization tips and resources.

You can also check out top data visualization trends in 2017

Top Data Visualization Trends in 2017