Reuse GOV.UK content
To reuse content published on GOV.UK you must meet the conditions of the Open Government Licence.
GOV.UK APIs
As well as providing content for people, GOV.UK also provides content for computers. These are called APIs.
There are 3 APIs that enable you to reuse GOV.UK content.
Content API
The Content API provides access to the data that renders content on GOV.UK. You can use the GOV.UK page URL to access the content and metadata hosted on GOV.UK.
Read the Content API documentation for guidance on accessing and using this API.
Bank Holidays API
The Bank Holidays API (in JSON format) provides access to data about when the next bank holidays are in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Search API (unsupported)
You can access additional metadata that sits behind GOV.UK search results by using the GOV.UK Search API. You can filter this data in different ways.
For guidance on how to use this API, read the Search API documentation and the GOV.UK blog post about using and filtering search data.
This is an unsupported API, which means the API may change without notice.
Scraping the site
You can scrape GOV.UK as long as you respect our robots.txt policy. If you make too many requests, your access will be limited until your request rate drops. This is known as rate limiting.
Schemas
GOV.UK uses schema.org markup to make it easier for web crawlers to index the site. These include:
- Article schema for most pages on GOV.UK
- NewsArticle schema for all news on GOV.UK
- HowTo schema for step-by-step journeys such as ‘Learn to drive a car’
Sitemap
GOV.UK provides a sitemap in XML format. This sitemap lists the majority of pages on GOV.UK.
Registers
GOV.UK registers provide lists of information via a secure API. Each register contains reliable and consistent data to design and build services with.
GOV.UK registers include: