Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange is the network of Q&A communities founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood and headlined by Stack Overflow, the largest community of software developers on the web. The Stack Exchange API v2.3 (api.stackexchange.com) is a single, read-mostly HTTP/JSON interface that spans 180+ Q&A sites — Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Stats, Math Overflow, and the long tail of topical communities — and exposes the entire Q&A graph (questions, answers, comments, users, tags, badges, reputation, revisions, notifications, inbox, suggested-edits, network sites) under a uniform method surface. Stack Exchange also operates Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge bases with its own v3 REST API) and ships an official Stack Overflow MCP server that grounds AI agents in community-verified content.
Solid contracts, transparent operations, and an easy start — typically complete on four or five facets with one clear soft spot.
API Evangelist profiles Stack Exchange the way a machine reads it — 92 machine-readable artifacts across 17 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Stack Exchange scores 60.9/100 (strong), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Stack Exchange
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Stack Exchange. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 17
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Stack Overflow for Teams API v3
Newer REST API powering Stack Overflow for Teams (private/internal instances). Resource-oriented (questions, answers, articles, comments, tags, users, collections, communities) ...
Stack Exchange Access Tokens API
OAuth access token introspection and invalidation.
Stack Exchange Answers API
Answer objects — list, fetch by id, and per-question answers.
Stack Exchange Badges API
Badges defined on a site — by id, name, type, and recipients.
Stack Exchange Comments API
Comments attached to questions and answers across the network.
Stack Exchange Events API
Recent network events (1.5 minute live window) for the authenticated user.
Stack Exchange Filters API
Custom response filter creation and inspection.
Stack Exchange Info API
Site-wide statistics, totals, and metadata.
Stack Exchange Me API
Convenience surfaces that infer the user from the OAuth access token.
Stack Exchange Posts API
Generic post surfaces covering both questions and answers as `post` objects.
Stack Exchange Questions API
Question objects across the network — list, fetch, related, linked, search-equivalents.
Stack Exchange Revisions API
Revision history for posts.
Stack Exchange Search API
Question search — basic title-match, full-text excerpts, and advanced.
Stack Exchange Sites API
Enumeration and metadata for the 180+ Stack Exchange Q&A sites.
Stack Exchange Suggested Edits API
Pending edits proposed by users awaiting review.
Stack Exchange Tags API
Tag catalog, synonyms, wikis, top askers/answerers, and related tags.
Stack Exchange Users API
Site users, their reputation, badges, tags, top posts, timeline, and write surfaces.
Scroll within the panel for all 17 ·
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Stackexchange Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSSemantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Spectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Stack Exchange API Rules
SPECTRALStack Exchange API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 22
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
AccessToken
JSON SCHEMAAnswer
JSON SCHEMABadgeCount
JSON SCHEMABadge
JSON SCHEMAComment
JSON SCHEMAEvent
JSON SCHEMAFilter
JSON SCHEMAInboxItem
JSON SCHEMAInfo
JSON SCHEMANotification
JSON SCHEMAPost
JSON SCHEMAPrivilegeItem
JSON SCHEMAQuestion
JSON SCHEMAReputationChange
JSON SCHEMARevision
JSON SCHEMAShallowUser
JSON SCHEMASite
JSON SCHEMASuggestedEdit
JSON SCHEMATag
JSON SCHEMATagScore
JSON SCHEMATagSynonym
JSON SCHEMAUser
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 22 ·
JSON Structure 22
JSON Structure captures the data shapes in a form built for tooling — a complement to JSON Schema that keeps the model machine-legible.
JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.
Stackexchange Api V2 3 Access Token Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Answer Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Badge Count Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Badge Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Comment Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Event Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Filter Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Inbox Item Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Info Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Notification Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Post Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Privilege Item Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Question Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Reputation Change Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Revision Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Shallow User Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Site Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Suggested Edit Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Tag Score Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Tag Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 Tag Synonym Structure
JSON STRUCTUREStackexchange Api V2 3 User Structure
JSON STRUCTUREScroll within the panel for all 22 ·
Examples 22
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Scroll within the panel for all 22 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Scopes 1
OAuth scopes are the vocabulary of least-privilege access. Profiling them shows exactly what an integration — or an agent acting on a user's behalf — is allowed to do.
OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Stack Exchange — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 2
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 5
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 2
The organization behind the API
Other 2
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/stackexchange · machine-readable index on apis.io