Data.gov: Free Government Data Your Business Can Search Today
Data.gov is the U.S. government's catalog of open data. Federal agencies, states, cities and counties list their datasets there, and the catalog points you to each one. As of October 2026 its homepage counts 590,222 datasets.
Three ways to use it this week
- A restaurant or food truck: search "food inspections" to find your city's or state's inspection records, if they publish them. Reading what inspectors write up most often is a free checklist before your next visit.
- A plumber, roofer or remodeler: search "building permits." Cities like Philadelphia and Seattle publish their permit records, which show where building and remodeling work is happening.
- Thinking about a second location: search "County Business Patterns." These Census Bureau files count businesses by industry, county by county, so you can see how many shops like yours are already in an area.
Try it now (no key, no account)
Open this link in your browser: catalog.data.gov/search?q=food inspections&per_page=3
It returns the top three matching datasets as raw data (JSON, the plain-text format apps read). When we tried it on October 13, 2026, it listed food inspection datasets from the City of Chicago, New York State and Wake County, North Carolina. If you just want to browse, type the same words into the search box at catalog.data.gov.
When you want an app to pull data on its own
Many federal data services, including ones from the National Park Service, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey, use one key from api.data.gov. The sign-up form asks for your name and email, and one key works across all the agencies that take part. Golden Rock can wire a dataset like this into a client's website or app, such as a lookup page or a map.
Limits and rules
- The test key,
DEMO_KEY, allows 30 requests per hour and 50 per day for each internet address. - Your own key allows 1,000 requests per hour by default. Go over and you get a "429" error; the block lifts after an hour.
- The catalog search above needs no key at all.
License and credit
Data.gov's open-license guidance says "Government works are by default in the U.S. Public Domain." Data from states, cities, counties and other outside groups can carry their own terms. The user guide says each dataset's Access & Use section shows its license when the publisher gives one, so check that before you reuse anything, and name the agency that published it.
Who should care: any local business that wants facts about its own city, county or industry without paying for a report.