Open States API v3

Name: Open States API v3 API
Brand: Open States API v3
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey12 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search U.S. state bills, legislators, committees, and legislative events across all 50 states with normalized fields and jurisdiction filtering.

Quickstart

Get started with Open States API v3 in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"search state legislative bills"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Open States API v3 API.

Search state legislative bills by jurisdiction, session, subject, and sponsor

Retrieve detailed bill records by Open States bill ID or jurisdiction-session-bill identifier

Look up state legislators with district, party, chamber, and contact details

Geolocate legislators serving a specific latitude and longitude using the people.geo endpoint

GET STARTED

Start building with Open States API v3 API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Open States API v3 provides programmatic access to U.S. state legislative data, including bills, legislators, committees, events, and jurisdictions across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Agents can search bills by subject or session, retrieve legislator profiles with district information, and pull committee memberships and meeting events. Data is normalized across state legislatures so a single query pattern works for any jurisdiction. The API requires a free API key and is maintained by the Open States project, a civic-tech nonprofit effort.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Open States API v3 API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Civic Bill Tracking Dashboard

Build a dashboard that tracks legislation across multiple U.S. states by subject area. The /bills endpoint accepts jurisdiction, session, subject, and updated_since filters so a daily job can surface only bills with recent action. Each result includes sponsors, action history, and links to the canonical state record. Coverage spans all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico with a unified schema.

Search /bills for jurisdiction=ca, session=20232024, subject=Housing, and return the 10 most recently updated bills with their sponsors and last action date

Legislator Lookup by Address

Provide constituents with a way to identify their state legislators from a geographic point. The /people.geo endpoint accepts lat and lng query parameters and returns the legislators whose districts contain that coordinate. This supports voter education tools, advocacy platforms, and constituent communication apps without requiring district shapefile management on the client side.

Call GET /people.geo with lat=37.7749 and lng=-122.4194 and return the names, parties, and chambers of legislators serving that point

Committee Membership Research

Researchers and journalists studying state policy can pull committee structures and memberships using /committees and /committees/{committee_id}. Results include the committee chamber, parent committee, subjects, and current member roster with role and party data. Combine with /people for full legislator profiles and /events for committee meeting schedules.

List all committees for jurisdiction=ny via GET /committees and fetch the full membership for the Finance committee

AI Agent Civic Research Assistant

An AI agent answering questions about U.S. state legislation can use Open States v3 through Jentic to search bills, fetch legislator records, and pull event schedules without scraping individual statehouse websites. Jentic resolves the agent's natural-language query into the right /bills, /people, or /events call, supplies the API key from the vault, and returns structured JSON the agent can summarize.

Through Jentic, search 'state bills about renewable energy in Texas' and return the top 5 bills with their summaries and current status

Key Endpoints

12 endpoints — open states api v3 provides programmatic access to u.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/bills

Search state bills with jurisdiction, session, and subject filters

GET

/bills/ocd-bill/{openstates_bill_id}

Retrieve a bill by its Open States bill ID

GET

/people

Search state legislators by name or jurisdiction

GET

/people.geo

Find legislators serving a given lat/lng

GET

/committees

List committees for a jurisdiction

GET

/events

List legislative events and hearings

GET

/jurisdictions

List supported state and territorial jurisdictions

GET

/bills

Search state bills with jurisdiction, session, and subject filters

GET

/bills/ocd-bill/{openstates_bill_id}

Retrieve a bill by its Open States bill ID

GET

/people

Search state legislators by name or jurisdiction

GET

/people.geo

Find legislators serving a given lat/lng

GET

/committees

List committees for a jurisdiction

Why though Jentic?

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

Credential isolation

Open States API keys are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents call the API through Jentic without ever holding the raw key, and keys can be rotated without redeploying agent code.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with a natural-language intent like 'find state bills about housing' and Jentic returns the matching Open States operation (GET /bills) with its parameter schema.

Time to first call

Direct integration with Open States: roughly half a day for auth, pagination, and jurisdiction handling. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Congress.gov API

Federal U.S. Congress data — bills, members, committees, and votes at the federal level.

Choose Congress.gov when the user asks about federal legislation or members of Congress; use Open States for state-level questions.

Complementary

Nominatim Geocoding API

Geocode street addresses to lat/lng so /people.geo can resolve them to a legislator.

Pair with Open States when the user provides an address rather than coordinates.

Alternative

ClinicalTrials.gov API

Different domain (clinical trials), similar government open-data shape — relevant when the user wants public-record lookup rather than legislative data.

Use ClinicalTrials.gov for medical research records; Open States for legislative records.

FAQs

Specific to using Open States API v3 API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Open States API v3 use?

Open States v3 uses an API key passed in the X-API-Key header. Keys are free after registration at openstates.org/accounts/signup. Through Jentic, the key is stored encrypted in the vault and injected at request time, so the agent never sees the raw value.

Can I look up a legislator by street address with the Open States API v3?

Not by raw address — the API exposes /people.geo which takes lat and lng. Geocode the address first with a service like Nominatim or Google Geocoding, then pass the coordinates to /people.geo to get matching state legislators.

What are the rate limits for the Open States API v3?

Open States enforces free-tier rate limits documented at docs.openstates.org. Higher request volumes require a paid plan from the Open States project. The /metrics endpoint exposes server-side request statistics.

How do I search for bills about a specific topic with the Open States API v3 through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'search state bills by subject', load the GET /bills schema, and execute with parameters like jurisdiction, session, and subject. Jentic returns matching results without you needing to read the Open States docs first.

Does the Open States API v3 cover federal Congress?

No — Open States covers only U.S. state and territorial legislatures (50 states, DC, Puerto Rico). For federal bills and members of Congress, use the Congress.gov API. Open States can be used alongside Congress.gov in the same workflow.

How current is the data in the Open States API v3?

Bill and legislator records are updated regularly from each state's official legislative system. The bill objects include updated_at timestamps so you can poll for changes since your last sync.