geo.admin.ch SearchServer API

Base URL

https://api3.geo.admin.ch/rest/services

Authentication

No API key or account. Swiss federal open government data, free to reuse with attribution.

Rate limit

No published quota. Fair use is expected; the service is sized for interactive map traffic rather than bulk extraction.

Pricing

Free.

CORS

Enabled — callable directly from browser JavaScript

Official docs

Read the docs

Every request below was executed against the live API on 2026-08-21, and the response shown is the real body it returned — not an illustration.

curl 'https://api3.geo.admin.ch/rest/services/api/SearchServer?searchText=Bern&type=locations&sr=4326&limit=2'

const res = await fetch("https://api3.geo.admin.ch/rest/services/api/SearchServer?searchText=Bern&type=locations&sr=4326&limit=2");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

res = requests.get("https://api3.geo.admin.ch/rest/services/api/SearchServer?searchText=Bern&type=locations&sr=4326&limit=2", timeout=20)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json())

{
  "results": [
    {
      "attrs": {
        "detail": "bern be",
        "featureId": "351",
        "geom_quadindex": "021",
        "geom_st_box2d": "BOX(7.294133 46.918995,7.495609 46.990139)",
        "label": "<b>Bern (BE)</b>",
        "lat": 46.954559326171875,
        "lon": 7.420684814453125,
        "num": 1,
        "objectclass": "",
        "origin": "gg25",
        "rank": 2,
        "x": 7.420684814453125,
        "y": 46.954559326171875,
        "zoomlevel": 4294967295
      },
      "id": 195,
      "weight": 100
    },
    {
      "attrs": {
        "detail": "Bern-Mittelland",
        "featureId": "246",
        "geom_quadindex": "021",
        "geom_st_box2d": "BOX(7.111942 46.670403,7.73361 47.122327)",
        "label": "<b>Bern-Mittelland</b>",
        "lat": 46.896873474121094,
        "lon": 7.495893478393555,
        "num": 1,
        "objectclass": "",
        "origin": "district",
        "rank": 3,
        "x": 7.495893478393555,
        "y": 46.896873474121094,
        "zoomlevel": 4294967295
      },
      "id": 246,
      "weight": 1
    }
  ]
}

resultsarray

Ranked matches, each wrapping its payload in an `attrs` object.

attrs.labelstring

Display label — and it contains HTML `<b>` tags, so strip them before using the text elsewhere.

attrs.detailstring

Plain-text form of the same label, usually lowercased. Often the easier field to use.

attrs.lat / attrs.lonfloat

Position in the requested spatial reference. With `sr=4326` these are ordinary WGS84 degrees.

attrs.x / attrs.yfloat

The same position again in the service's own axis order. Compare against lat/lon before assuming which is which.

attrs.geom_st_box2dstring

Bounding box as a `BOX(minx miny,maxx maxy)` string, handy for zooming a map to the result.

attrs.originstring

Which dataset produced the hit: `gg25` for municipalities, `district`, `address`, `parcel` and so on.

attrs.featureIdstring

Identifier within that source dataset, for follow-up queries.

weightinteger

Ranking weight. Higher is a stronger match.

• Add Swiss place and address autocomplete to a form or map
• Resolve a Swiss postcode or municipality to coordinates
• Look up cadastral parcels by number
• Query official federal layers — hazard zones, land use, protected areas — at a point
• Convert between WGS84 and the Swiss LV95 grid by requesting both