All StatBank data is now available as open data

API is a programming interface with StatBank, and stands for “Application Programming Interface". Through API, users have access to all 5 000 tables published in StatBank, i.e. several billion figures. Using API will enable users to:

• Integrate Statistics Norway’s statistics into their own system
• Create services, applications and visualisations based on Statistics Norway’s figures
• Combine Statistics Norway’s statistics with other data
• Retrieve updated figures directly in Excel
• Have a direct channel to StatBank

Large users of statistics will benefit

API is aimed at users who are interested in regular automated downloading of figures or large volumes of data. The main target group is IT developers, but economists, data journalists and other large users of statistics will also find the new interface helpful.

Results from API queries can be directly downloaded as Excel or CSV files. We recommend the format JSON-stat, which is particularly suitable for statistics or data cubes.

New and complete version of API

In 2013, Statistics Norway launched a limited API with ready-made data sets for the most commonly used tables in StatBank. Now all published figures are available. The old API will continue as before in parallel with the new interface. One of the new features is that users now need to create their own queries. The limit for each query is 500 000 cells.

In order to make the new API more user-friendly, we have developed a console that produces a draft of the query. In the console, users can also edit and test queries, and get the results in different formats. Queries are formulated in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). At the moment, the new API only supports http POST, and not GET, which is the most common.

For more information, see the user guidelines for the new API.