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US Census Bureau website screenshot

US Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. Established in 1902 and part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau conducts the constitutionally mandated Decennial Census every ten years and dozens of ongoing surveys including the American Community Survey, Economic Census, Population Estimates, Current Population Survey, and Survey of Income and Program Participation. The Census Bureau exposes its statistics through the Census Data API (over 1,700 datasets), the Microdata API for PUMS tabulation, the TIGERweb geospatial REST services, and the Geocoding Services API — all free, requiring only a free API key for the data endpoints and released into the public domain under CC0.

agent ready

Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.

Kin Score

API Evangelist profiles US Census Bureau the way a machine reads it — 64 machine-readable artifacts across 19 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 — US Census Bureau scores 47.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 52/100 (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 Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 47.0/100 · developing
Contract Quality 16.5 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 8.3 / 20
Commercial Clarity 4.2 / 20
Operational Transparency 6.8 / 13
Governance 3.2 / 12
Discoverability 6.8 / 10
Regulatory · Government & Public Sector 8.1 / 15
Agent readiness — 52/100 · agent ready
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 4 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

How we profile US Census Bureau

Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for US Census Bureau. 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 19

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.

US Census Bureau 2010 API

The 2010 API from US Census Bureau — 1 operation(s) for 2010.

US Census Bureau 2020 API

The 2020 API from US Census Bureau — 1 operation(s) for 2020.

US Census Bureau ACS API

American Community Survey datasets (1-Year, Supplemental, 5-Year)

US Census Bureau ACS PUMS API

ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (person and household)

US Census Bureau Batch API

Bulk geocoding (up to 10,000 records)

US Census Bureau Catalog API

Service directory

US Census Bureau CPS API

Current Population Survey basic monthly and supplements

US Census Bureau Current API

Current vintage TIGERweb services

US Census Bureau Decennial API

Decennial Census of Population and Housing

US Census Bureau Discovery API

Dataset discovery via the DCAT-compliant catalog

US Census Bureau Economic API

Economic Census, ABS, CBP, NES

US Census Bureau Geographies API

Address to coordinates plus Census geographies

US Census Bureau Locations API

Address to coordinates

US Census Bureau Metadata API

Per-dataset variables, groups, geographies, and examples

US Census Bureau PEP API

Population Estimates Program

US Census Bureau Popclock API

The Popclock API from US Census Bureau — 2 operation(s) for popclock.

US Census Bureau Pulse API

Household Pulse Survey near-real-time experimental data

US Census Bureau SIPP API

Survey of Income and Program Participation panels

US Census Bureau Timeseries API

The Timeseries API from US Census Bureau — 7 operation(s) for timeseries.

Scroll within the panel for all 19 ·

Open Collections 7

Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Census Data API

OPEN COLLECTION

International Trade API

OPEN COLLECTION

Census Microdata API

OPEN COLLECTION

Population Clock API

OPEN COLLECTION

TIGERweb REST Services

OPEN COLLECTION

Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·

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.

Us Census Bureau Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Features 24

The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Over 1,700 datasets exposed via a single REST API base (api.census.gov/data)
American Community Survey (ACS) 1-Year, 1-Year Supplemental, 3-Year, and 5-Year detailed and subject tables
Decennial Census of Population and Housing (2000, 2010, 2020) Public Law 94-171 and DHC tables
Economic Census 2002-2022 with establishment, sales, payroll, employment by industry and geography
Population Estimates Program (PEP) — annual intercensal estimates by age, sex, race, Hispanic origin
Annual Business Survey (ABS) — women, minority, veteran owned business statistics
County Business Patterns (CBP) and ZIP Code Business Patterns (ZBP) — annual since 1986
Nonemployer Statistics (NES) — businesses with no paid employees
Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) — establishment births, deaths, job creation, destruction
Household Pulse Survey — near-real-time experimental data on social and economic effects
Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) and Job-to-Job Flows from LEHD
International Trade — monthly imports and exports, HS commodity codes, port-level
Current Population Survey (CPS) basic monthly and supplements (microdata)
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) longitudinal panels
Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE)
Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE)
Population Clock JSON feed for real-time U.S. and world population estimates
Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) tabulation API for ACS, CPS, and SIPP
TIGERweb ArcGIS REST services — states, counties, tracts, blocks, ZCTAs, congressional districts
Geocoding Services API — address to coordinates and Census geographies (free, no key)
DCAT-compliant discovery catalog at api.census.gov/data.json
CitySDK JavaScript library and official Census Data API MCP server for AI assistants
All data released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) public domain dedication
Free API key with no published rate limit; one key per email; required for all data queries

Scroll within the panel for all 24 ·

Semantic 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.

Us Census Bureau Context

7 classes · 4 properties

JSON-LD

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.

US Census Bureau API Rules

7 rules · 3 errors · 4 warnings

SPECTRAL

US Census Bureau API Rules

5 rules · 3 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

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.

CensusDataRow

0 properties

JSON SCHEMA

CensusDatasetMetadata

19 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

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.

Census Data Row Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 4

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.

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.

Us Census Bureau Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Us Census Bureau Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

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.

Us Census Bureau Agentic Access

47 operations · 2 acting

47 operations · 2 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Every other property we hold for US Census Bureau — 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 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Build 4

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Company 1

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/us-census-bureau · machine-readable index on apis.io