Government · head-to-head
Data.parliament.uk vs EPA
The Dataset Explorer's underlying Linked Data API, hosted at `lda.data.parliament.uk`, is still live: a keyless GET against `bills.json` returned real, paginated bill records (2,000+ results) with a wildcard `Access-Control-Allow-Origin` header, and `endpoints.json` lists dozens of other datasets (committees, attendance, members) served the same way. It's a legacy platform, though — Parliament now also runs newer per-domain REST APIs (`members-api.parliament.uk`, `bills-api.parliament.uk`) that cover the same ground with a modern interface and are worth checking first for new integrations.
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.
| Data.parliament.uk | EPA | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, XML, RDF/XML | JSON, XML, CSV, Excel |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
EPA supports 4 response formats, while Data.parliament.uk offers fewer — pick EPA for more integration flexibility.