CodeCogs vs USGS Earthquake Hazards Program

CodeCogs runs a keyless image-rendering service that turns a LaTeX markup string embedded in the URL path into a rendered equation, historically used to drop math into forums, wikis, and emails via a plain <img> tag. It supports PNG, SVG, GIF, PDF, and EMF output, plus a JSON mode that returns the render as base64 alongside a hosted file URL.

The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program's FDSNWS Event Web Service is a keyless REST API for querying the agency's global earthquake catalog by region, time window, magnitude, or depth, returning real-time and historical seismic event data. Requests default to QuakeML XML but can also return GeoJSON, CSV, or KML via a format parameter, and the whole service is free and unauthenticated, run directly by the federal government.