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GOV.UK Search API

Free GOV.UK Search API with no key: search all UK government content — guidance, news, forms, statistics and services — with filtering and facets. Tested.

No API key requiredCORS enabledHTTPSFree tier

Endpoint tested and returned HTTP 200 on 2026-08-20

What is the GOV.UK Search API?

The GOV.UK Search API is a free, key-free API for searching all content published on GOV.UK — guidance, services, news, consultations, statistics and forms — across every UK government department.

GOV.UK is the single publishing platform for all UK central government, and this API searches the entire corpus. That makes it the authoritative route to government guidance rather than scraping departmental sites.

Filtering by `content_store_document_type` and organisation is what makes it practical: you can restrict to statistical releases from one department, or to guidance pages only, rather than sifting the whole estate.

Quick facts

Base URL
https://www.gov.uk/api
Authentication
No API key required.
Rate limit
No published hard limit; reasonable use expected.
Pricing
Free under the Open Government Licence.
CORS
Enabled — callable directly from browser JavaScript
Official docs
Read the docs

How to use the GOV.UK Search API

Every request below was executed against the live API on 2026-08-20, and the response shown is the real body it returned — not an illustration.

1. Search GOV.UK content

GET https://www.gov.uk/api/search.json?count=1

curl
curl 'https://www.gov.uk/api/search.json?count=1'
JavaScript (fetch)
const res = await fetch("https://www.gov.uk/api/search.json?count=1");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
Python (requests)
import requests

res = requests.get("https://www.gov.uk/api/search.json?count=1", timeout=20)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json())
Response — HTTP 200 (truncated)
{
  "results": [
    {
      "description": "Sign in to your Universal Credit account - report a change, add a note to your journal, see your payments and do other tasks ",
      "format": "transaction",
      "link": "/sign-in-universal-credit",
      "organisations": [
        {
          "organisation_type": "ministerial_department",
          "organisation_state": "live",
          "superseding_organisations": [],
          "acronym": "DWP",
          "content_id": "b548a09f-8b35-4104-89f4-f1a40bf3136d",
          "link": "/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions",
          "parent_organisations": [],
          "superseded_organisations": [
            "department-of-social-security",
            "pension-service",
            "pension-disability-and-carers-service",
            "disability-and-carers-service",
            "bpdts-ltd"
          ],
          "analytics_identifier": "D10",
          "title": "Department for Work and Pensions",
          "organisation_crest": "single-identity",
          "organisation_brand": "department-for-work-pensions",
          "child_organisations": [
            "equality-2025",
            "industrial-injuries-advisory-council",
            "social-security-advisory-committee",
            "health-and-safety-executive",
            "the-pensions-advisory-service",
            "the-pensions-regulator",
            "pension-protection-fund-ombudsman",
            "pensions-ombudsman",
            "national-employment-savings-trust",
            "remploy-ltd",
            "pension-protection-fund",
            "indepen

Parameters

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
search.jsonpathRequiredThe search endpoint. search.json
qstringOptionalSearch query. universal credit
countintegerOptionalResults per page, max 1000. 10
startintegerOptionalPagination offset. 10
filter_content_store_document_typestringOptionalRestrict to a content type. guidance
filter_organisationsstringOptionalRestrict to a department slug. hm-revenue-customs

Response fields

resultsarray
Matching content items.
results[].titlestring
Page title.
results[].descriptionstring
Page summary.
results[].linkstring
Path on GOV.UK — prefix with the domain.
results[].public_timestampstring
When the content was last updated.
results[].content_store_document_typestring
guidance, news_story, statistics and so on.
totalinteger
Total matching results.

What you can build with the GOV.UK Search API

  • Surface official government guidance inside a product
  • Monitor GOV.UK for new publications on a topic
  • Build a government service finder
  • Track policy and statistical releases by department

Common errors and how to fix them

link is a path, not a URL

Results return site-relative paths.

Fix: Prefix with https://www.gov.uk to build a working link.

Too many irrelevant results

The corpus is enormous.

Fix: Filter by content type and organisation rather than relying on the query alone.

Content changes without notice

Government guidance is updated frequently.

Fix: Do not cache indefinitely; check public_timestamp.

GOV.UK Search API — frequently asked questions

Is the GOV.UK API free?

Yes, free with no API key under the Open Government Licence, which requires attribution.

What content does it cover?

Everything published on GOV.UK — guidance, services, news, consultations, statistics and forms — across all UK central government departments.

Why are the links relative?

Results return site-relative paths such as /universal-credit. Prefix them with https://www.gov.uk to build working links.

How do I narrow results to one department?

Use filter_organisations with the department slug, optionally combined with filter_content_store_document_type to restrict to guidance or statistics.

Tools that pair with this API

GOV.UK Search is an independent third-party service and is not affiliated with ByteTools or ByteVancer. Details on this page were verified on 2026-08-20; always check the official documentation before relying on this API in production, as terms and limits can change.