Coming soon. The API is not open yet. Every request is refused with HTTP 503 and the problem type not-yet-open until launch, and sign-up opens then. The API Terms are still being reviewed.

Parcel facts with their sources

Look up a parcel by address, point or county and parcel number, then read its facts by section: basics, assessment, tax, sales, zoning and overlays. Every fact names its source, source URL, retrieved date and license class. Official government pages for the parcel come from GISFinder. This is built for one parcel or one question at a time, not for bulk export.

Rules

• No FCRA uses. This data may not be used for credit, insurance, employment, tenant screening, housing or any other eligibility decision.
• The county is the authority. Parcel maps are not surveys. The county is the authority for boundaries, ownership, values and taxes; check the county record, or a licensed surveyor for boundaries, before relying on any fact here.
• Overlays are screening. Flood, wetland and soil shares are screening from mapped layers, not an official determination. The FEMA flood layer covers most but not all of the country.
• No person search. There is no owner-name search. Without a key you never get owner names or mailing addresses. With a key they appear only where the county's sources and state policy allow it, and never in area search. Phones and emails are never part of any response.
• Removed means removed. When a parcel you hold answers 404, delete your copy; when it answers superseded, use its successors.
• Only counties and records whose source is licensed open or public_record are served. GET /v1/coverage lists them.

Quickstart

No key is needed to start. Find the parcel:

curl 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels/lookup?address=123+Main+St+Springfield+MN'

Take a parcel_uid from the candidates and read its facts, or just the sections you need:

curl 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels/pg_01J9ZX3T5C8E2D7Q4W6B1N0MRA?sections=basics,assessment'
curl 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels/pg_01J9ZX3T5C8E2D7Q4W6B1N0MRA/overlays'
curl 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels/pg_01J9ZX3T5C8E2D7Q4W6B1N0MRA/official-resources?topic=assessor'

Parcels in a small area, filtered by acreage or land use:

curl 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels?lat=46.1005&lon=-93.0995&radius_m=500&min_acres=5'

With a key, send it as a bearer token:

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer pgk_...' 'https://api.publicgis.com/v1/parcels/lookup?lat=46.1005&lon=-93.0995'

Every answer is the envelope data, sources, as_of, request_id, notices. Errors are RFC 9457 application/problem+json. Coordinates are WGS84, longitude first.

Keys

Without a key you are limited per IP address to 60 requests a minute and 1000 a day. With a key: 300 a minute and 20000 a day. A key is shown once and stored only as a digest; keep it on your server, never in browser code.

Limits, caching and CORS

• Every response carries RateLimit-Policy (for example "minute";q=60;w=60, "day";q=1000;w=86400) and RateLimit (what remains in each window and the seconds until it resets). Over a limit you get 429 with Retry-After; wait that long.
• Reads carry ETag and Cache-Control: private, max-age=60. Send If-None-Match to get 304. The ETag changes whenever a privacy change is published, so do not keep answers past their freshness without revalidating.
• Area search is capped at 2 square kilometres or a 1000 metre radius and 50 parcels a page. Pass next_cursor back as cursor with the same query; the order is stable.
• Browsers on any origin may call the anonymous tier (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, no credentials). Keyed requests are for servers.

Errors

The type of every problem is https://www.publicgis.com/problems/ followed by one of: invalid-request ◦ invalid-key ◦ not-found ◦ no-match ◦ license-not-cleared ◦ method-not-allowed ◦ rate-limited ◦ not-yet-open ◦ unavailable ◦ server-error.

Versions and deprecation

This is version 1 under /v1. New fields and endpoints may be added at any time; ignore what you do not know. An endpoint, parameter or field is removed no sooner than 12 months after it is announced in the changelog, and deprecated responses carry Deprecation and Sunset headers.

MCP server for AI agents

The same data is offered to AI agents at https://api.publicgis.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, read-only tools find_parcel, get_parcel_report, check_parcel_overlays, find_parcels_in_area, get_official_resources, get_coverage). See llms.txt.

Reference

Generated from the OpenAPI 3.1 document, which is the source of truth.

Schemas