ONS Developer Hub API

Name: ONS Developer Hub API
Brand: ONS Developer Hub API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData Transformationnone11 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Pull UK statistical data and metadata from the Office for National Statistics, including observations, datasets, code lists, and hierarchies, with no API key required.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the ONS Developer Hub API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the ONS Developer Hub API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with ONS Developer Hub API.

Retrieve observation-level data points from a dataset by dimensions

Filter and export a dataset slice via a POST request to /export

Look up resources, taxonomies, and the published index of available data

GET STARTED

Start building with ONS Developer Hub API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The ONS Developer Hub API gives programmatic access to UK statistical data published by the Office for National Statistics. The API is open and unauthenticated and exposes datasets, observations, code lists, and hierarchies behind a small set of REST endpoints, with a POST-based filter operation for slicing large datasets. It is designed for analysts, journalists, and data engineers who need machine-readable access to UK official statistics rather than scraping the ons.gov.uk website. The API is in beta, so consumers should pin to the v1 base path and expect occasional changes.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use ONS Developer Hub API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Newsroom data journalism

Newsrooms covering UK inflation, employment, or population stories need to pull the official ONS numbers as soon as they release. The Developer Hub API provides direct observation-level access and a published-data feed for scheduled releases, so journalists can wire up dashboards and chart factories that update automatically. No API key means a tight time-to-first-chart for ad hoc reporting.

GET /publisheddata for the last 24 hours, then GET /data for the inflation observation matching the latest CPI release.

Economic research and modelling

Economists and analysts pull UK time series for use in forecasts and academic models. The /data and /export endpoints together support both fine-grained observation reads and bulk dataset slicing, with code-list and hierarchy endpoints that document the dimensions so researchers know what they are joining on. Pipelines built once tend to run for years against the v1 base path.

POST /export with a filter for GDP by region for the last 5 years and download the resulting export file.

Public sector dashboards and policy analytics

Local councils and central government teams build dashboards that combine ONS releases with their own administrative data. The taxonomy and resolvedatasets endpoints help map ONS datasets onto policy areas, and the resource lookup keeps the dashboard pointing to the canonical, citable file. Most policy dashboards integrate ONS as a nightly or weekly batch.

GET /taxonomy filtered to the cost-of-living node, list datasets for that node via /resolvedatasets, then GET /data for each dataset's headline series.

AI agent statistics lookup through Jentic

An AI assistant that answers UK economic questions can call ONS through Jentic to ground its answers in official statistics. The agent searches Jentic for the data lookup operation, loads the schema, and queries /data with the right dimensions. The unauthenticated nature of the API means there is no credential to manage, but Jentic still gives the agent a typed schema and consistent error handling.

Search Jentic for 'ons data observation', load the GET /data operation, and execute it for a known dataset id and dimension filter.

Key Endpoints

11 endpoints — the ons developer hub api gives programmatic access to uk statistical data published by the office for national statistics.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/data

Retrieve observation-level data points

POST

/export

Submit a filter to export a dataset slice

GET

/resource

Look up a single dataset resource

GET

/publishedindex

List recently published datasets

GET

/taxonomy

Walk the ONS topic taxonomy

GET

/resolvedatasets

List datasets attached to a taxonomy node

GET

/filesize

Read the size of a resource ahead of download

GET

/data

Retrieve observation-level data points

POST

/export

Submit a filter to export a dataset slice

GET

/resource

Look up a single dataset resource

GET

/publishedindex

List recently published datasets

GET

/taxonomy

Walk the ONS topic taxonomy

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

ONS requires no credentials, so there is nothing to vault. Jentic still gives the agent a consistent invocation surface so the same code pattern works for ONS and for credentialed APIs in the same workflow.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like 'ons consumer prices' or 'list ons datasets' and Jentic returns the matching operations with their input schemas, including the taxonomy and dataset id parameters, so the agent can navigate the catalogue without reading developer.ons.gov.uk.

Time to first call

Direct ONS integration: 2-3 days to learn the taxonomy, observation, and export model. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes because there is no auth to set up and the schemas are pre-loaded.

FAQs

Specific to using ONS Developer Hub API through Jentic.

What authentication does the ONS Developer Hub API use?

None. The API is open and unrestricted, and the OpenAPI spec declares no security schemes. You can call it directly without an API key. Through Jentic, the call is still routed and rate-managed consistently with other APIs even though there is no credential to inject.

Can I download a slice of a dataset rather than every observation?

Yes. POST a filter description to /export to ask ONS to assemble the slice as an export, then read the resulting resource. For point lookups, GET /data returns observations matching a set of dimension values directly. /filesize lets the pipeline size storage before triggering a large export.

What are the rate limits for the ONS Developer Hub API?

ONS does not publish hard rate limits in the spec, but the API is in beta and shared by all developers. Polite usage is to cache responses, batch reads through /export rather than looping /data, and back off on any 429 or 5xx responses. ONS reserves the right to throttle abusive callers.

How do I look up the latest UK inflation data through Jentic?

Install the SDK with 'pip install jentic', search for the operation with the query 'ons consumer prices observation', then load the GET /data operation, and execute it with the dataset id for CPI and the latest period dimension. Jentic returns the observation values straight to the agent.

Is the API stable enough for production use?

The API is documented as beta and ONS notes that breaking changes can occur. Pin to the published v1 base path, monitor the /publishedindex for catalogue changes, and treat schema additions as backwards-compatible while expecting occasional removals or renames on minor revisions.

How do I navigate ONS datasets by topic?

Use GET /taxonomy to walk the topic tree, GET /parents to climb upward from a node, and GET /resolvedatasets to list the datasets attached to a topic. From there, GET /data or POST /export work against any dataset id you find in the topic walk.