Science & Math · head-to-head
Newton vs USGS Water Services
Newton is a keyless calculator API deployed as a Vercel serverless function: the operation (simplify, factor, derive, integrate, and more) and expression are both encoded directly in the URL path, and it answers with a small JSON object containing the result. It's a solo open-source project (aunyks/newton-api) rather than a commercial service, so there's no pricing tier or rate limit to opt into.
USGS Water Services is a keyless REST API serving real-time and historical streamflow, groundwater, and water-quality readings from thousands of USGS monitoring sites across the US, in WaterML XML, JSON, or the legacy tab-delimited RDB format. The agency has announced it will decommission this API family in early 2027 in favor of its new Water Data APIs (api.waterdata.usgs.gov), with no degradation planned before August 2026 — new integrations should target the successor service.
| Newton | USGS Water Services | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON | JSON, XML, RDB |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
USGS Water Services supports 3 response formats, while Newton offers fewer — pick USGS Water Services for more integration flexibility.