Usgs Water Plans
USGS Water Services are funded by the U.S. federal government and provided free of charge to all users with no subscription fees, data charges, or usage costs. All water data produced by USGS is in the public domain and freely available for any use. The primary access differentiation is between unauthenticated (anonymous) access subject to conservative rate limits, and free API-key authenticated access that grants higher rate limits. API keys are available at no cost via a self-service registration form at api.waterdata.usgs.gov/signup/.
Usgs Water Plans is the machine-readable pricing-plan profile for USGS Water Services on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Plans specification.
It defines 2 plans, covering free tiers, with named plans including Anonymous / Unauthenticated, Free API Key (Higher Rate Limits).
Tagged areas include Water, Hydrology, Environmental, Government, and Open Data.
Plans
Default access with no registration or API key required. Suitable for occasional queries, research, and development. Subject to conservative rate limits; IP addresses may be blocked if requests impact service availability for other users. All USGS water data is in the public domain.
- Instantaneous Values Service
- Daily Values Service
- Site Service
- Statistics Service
- Groundwater Levels Service
- Water Quality Portal
- OGC APIs (api.waterdata.usgs.gov)
Free registration at api.waterdata.usgs.gov/signup/ provides an API key that raises the per-hour request ceiling above the anonymous baseline. No cost, no credit card, no approval required. Contact [email protected] for custom high-volume needs.
- Instantaneous Values Service
- Daily Values Service
- Site Service
- Statistics Service
- Groundwater Levels Service
- OGC APIs (api.waterdata.usgs.gov)
- Higher Rate Limits
- API Key Authentication