Government — entry 028 of 90
FBI Wanted
The FBI Wanted API returns structured records for the Bureau's public Wanted lists — fugitives, missing persons, seeking-information subjects, and the Ten Most Wanted — including photos, physical descriptions, and field-office assignments. It's fully keyless and returns JSON; the live endpoint answers normally even on occasions when the developer documentation page itself trips Cloudflare's bot-fight challenge for automated clients. It's read-only, mirroring the same listings shown on fbi.gov/wanted.
The FBI Wanted API serves structured JSON records for every list on fbi.gov/wanted — fugitives, missing persons, seeking-information subjects, and the Ten Most Wanted — including photos, physical descriptions, reward text, and field-office assignments, with no account or key required.
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<a href="https://greatapis.com/api/fbi-wanted/"><img src="https://greatapis.com/badge/fbi-wanted.svg" alt="Scored 74 on greatapis.com"></a>Auth quickstart
- No API key required — requests are public and keyless. Note that `fbi.gov/wanted/api`, the FBI's own documentation page, returned a 403 to an automated request when checked on 2026-07-26 (Cloudflare's bot-fight gate on the docs page, not the API), while `api.fbi.gov` itself answered normally — the API and its docs page sit behind different protections.
Your key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the API — never to greatapis.
List wanted persons, one per page
GEThttps://api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1/list?pageSize=1
{
"total": 1214,
"items": [
{
"uid": "9627161690684c62ada3daa4dee61645",
"title": "ELAINE ANGENE ESCOE",
"subjects": ["Most Wanted Fraudster"],
"status": "captured",
"field_offices": ["miami"],
"sex": "Female",
"race": "black",
"nationality": "Jamaican",
"reward_text": "The FBI is offering a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Elaine Angene Escoe.",
"publication": "2025-09-02T10:30:00",
"modified": "2026-07-25T20:17:29+00:00",
"url": "https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/most-wanted-fraudsters/elaine-angene-escoe",
"images": [
{ "original": "https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/most-wanted-fraudsters/elaine-angene-escoe/@@images/image" }
]
}
],
"page": 1
}Developer reference
https://api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1Gotchas & limits
- A single full item is roughly 4 KB — most of it a long HTML `caution` field, `images` with three URL variants each (`thumb`/`large`/`original`), and about a dozen null fields for attributes the record doesn't have. Trim the response to the fields you need rather than storing every item whole.
- `status` isn't limited to "wanted" — confirmed live on 2026-07-26, the default listing returned a `captured` record, so filter or check `status` client-side if you only want subjects still at large.
- Free-text search isn't a separate endpoint: pass `title=` (matched against the person's name) directly on `/wanted/v1/list`, e.g. `?title=escoe&pageSize=1` — confirmed live to return a 2-record match.
- CORS is fully open — a live OPTIONS preflight returned `access-control-allow-origin: *`, `access-control-allow-methods: GET, POST` — but the response is also gated by Cloudflare bot-management cookies (`__cf_bm`, `_cfuvid`) set on every call, which browser `fetch` handles transparently but some HTTP clients need to carry across requests.
- There's no documented rate limit or key-based higher tier — the API is entirely anonymous, so build in your own client-side throttling if polling frequently.