Government · head-to-head
City, New York Open Data vs EPA
NYC Open Data runs on Socrata; a live keyless GET against the SODA endpoint for the 311 service-request dataset (`data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/erm2-nwe9.json`) returned full JSON with a wildcard `Access-Control-Allow-Origin` header, and the same resource is fetchable as CSV by swapping the file extension. Anonymous reads work without any credential; registering a free Socrata app token is optional and only raises the per-IP throttling limit.
EPA's Envirofacts platform exposes the agency's environmental compliance and monitoring databases — air quality, drinking water systems, the Toxics Release Inventory, hazardous waste, and Superfund sites — through a keyless REST API at `data.epa.gov/efservice`. Any of the underlying tables can be queried by building a URL from the table name, filter columns, and an output format, with results returned as JSON, XML, CSV, or Excel. EPA's Developer Central site separately documents smaller topic widgets built on the same data.
| City, New York Open Data | EPA | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, CSV | JSON, XML, CSV, Excel |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
EPA supports 4 response formats, while City, New York Open Data offers fewer — pick EPA for more integration flexibility.