# Catalogues / lists / repositories of open data sources **URL:** \ **Category:** Catalogues\ **Tags:** open-data\ **Created:** [February 17, 2026, 5:26am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-data-sources/19 "2026-02-17T05:26:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Moderator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Moderator](https://fairtechforum.com/u/Moderator)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 5:26am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-data-sources/19/1 "2026-02-17T05:26:06Z")
# Open data — meta-directories (lists of lists) _This wiki post presents a curated overview of **directories, catalogues, registries and curated lists whose primary content is other open data sources** — portals, repositories, databases, datasets, or lists of creative assets. This file lists **meta-directories only** — resources whose value is in pointing to other open data sources. Individual datasets, portals, repositories and asset collections are described in a second wiki post below. This is a wiki post, so you can add to this post; please feel free to enrich/improve where you can!!_ * * * ## 1. Cross-domain meta-directories General-purpose directories that span many types of open data source. The broadest starting points. - **[DataPortals.org](https://dataportals.org/)** — ~520 open data portals worldwide. Long-standing curated registry maintained by an international group of open data experts; covers local, regional and national levels. - **[OpenDataSoft – Open Data Sources catalogue](https://data.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/open-data-sources@public/)** — **2,900+** portals worldwide, organised by geography. Generally regarded as the most comprehensive list. - **[Open Data Inception](https://opendatainception.io/)** — Geotagged map view of ~1,600+ open data portals worldwide; built on the OpenDataSoft list but useful for browsing by location. - **[DataCatalogs.org](http://datacatalogs.org/)** — Long-running curated catalogue of open data catalogues (now redirects to / merged with [DataPortals.org](http://DataPortals.org)). - **[CKAN Portals listing](https://ckan.org/portals)** — Index of CKAN-powered open data portals; CKAN underpins a large share of government data portals globally. - **[PortalJS Data Portals listing](https://www.portaljs.com/data-portals)** — Modern catalogue of open data portals maintained by the PortalJS project (Datopian/CKAN ecosystem). - **[List of open government data sites (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_government_data_sites)** — Wikipedia-maintained country-by-country index of national, regional and municipal OGD portals. - **[EasyData Open Data Portals Catalogus](https://easydata.nl/open-data-portalen-catalogus/)** — Dutch-language catalogue of open data portals (NL-based, global in scope). - **[Awesome Public Datasets](https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets)** — Topic-organised GitHub list of high-value public datasets; hundreds of entries, community-maintained. - **[sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)** — The hub-of-hubs: **1,000+** topical “awesome” lists, several of which (datasets, transit, citizen science, ML) are themselves directories of open data sources. - **[brandonhimpfen/awesome-open-data](https://github.com/brandonhimpfen/awesome-open-data)** — Curated list of open data resources, tools and platforms across domains. - **[CoolDatasets](https://cooldatasets.com/)** — Curated, lightly categorised collection of public datasets across topics. - **[Open Data Impact Map](https://opendataimpactmap.org/)** — Global database of organisations that use open data (Center for Open Data Enterprise); useful for finding sectoral data users and sources. * * * ## 2. Directories of government & intergovernmental portals Meta-lists specifically of official government / IGO open data portals. - **[List of open government data sites (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_government_data_sites)** — (Also in §1.) The most complete country-by-country index of government portals. - **[US City Open Data Census](http://us-cities.survey.okfn.org/)** — Ranks US cities by their data-sharing policies; doubles as a navigation index to city portals. - **[Open Data Monitor (EU, legacy)](https://opendatamonitor.eu/)** — Index/benchmark of European national open data portals (now largely dormant). - **[NAPCORE](https://napcore.eu/)** — Coordination body for the EU’s 30+ mobility National Access Points; the authoritative directory of national transport-data portals (see also §7). * * * ## 3. Registries of research data repositories (generalist) Cross-disciplinary registries of repositories that hold research data. - **[re3data.org – Registry of Research Data Repositories](https://www.re3data.org/)** — **3,300+** research data repositories across all disciplines, with rich metadata (subjects, certifications, policies, APIs). Run by DataCite + KIT + Purdue + partners. The canonical registry for scientific repositories. - **[FAIRsharing.org](https://fairsharing.org/)** — Curated registry of data standards, databases and policies; ~2,000+ databases catalogued with FAIR-compliance metadata. - **[OpenDOAR](https://opendoar.ac.uk/)** — Global directory of ~6,000 academic open-access repositories (including data); operated by Jisc. - **[Open Access Directory: Data Repositories](https://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Data_repositories)** — Wiki-maintained directory of data repositories, hosted by Simmons University. * * * ## 4. Catalogues of databases within a domain Meta-lists of the major databases in a _specific_ field — the canonical “where are all the databases for X” references. ### Life sciences & biomedical - **[NAR Online Molecular Biology Database Collection](https://www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/database/c/)** — Curated catalogue of **~1,650** molecular-biology and bioinformatics databases, classified into 15 categories and 41 sub-categories; maintained alongside the annual _Nucleic Acids Research_ Database Issue. The canonical meta-list for the life sciences. - **[FAIRsharing (life sciences view)](https://fairsharing.org/)** — (Also in §3.) Especially deep for biomedical databases and standards. ### Astronomy - **[VizieR (CDS)](https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/)** — The most complete library of published astronomical catalogues; **~24,000** catalogues and tables gathered by the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. The reference meta-catalogue for astronomy. - **[NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/)** — 15M+ records; indexes external data catalogues and archives alongside the literature. ### Linguistics & language - **[OLAC – Open Language Archives Community](http://www.language-archives.org/)** — International federation/meta-catalogue of dozens of language-resource archives (LDC, ELRA, AILLA, ELAR, etc.) searchable through one interface. - **[CLARIN Virtual Language Observatory](https://vlo.clarin.eu/)** — Cross-archive discovery over the CLARIN network’s language resources. ### Linked / semantic data - **[Linked Open Data Cloud](https://lod-cloud.net/)** — Diagram and dataset of **~1,300** interlinked Linked Open Data datasets across nine domains (geography, government, life sciences, linguistics, media, etc.). Maintained by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics; CC BY. ### Cultural heritage - **[Europeana](https://www.europeana.eu/)** and **[DPLA](https://dp.la/)** — Each aggregates thousands of institutions, so each effectively functions as a meta-directory of cultural-heritage collections (also listed as sources in the companion file). * * * ## 5. Dataset search engines & aggregators (that index many sources) Tools that don’t host data themselves but catalogue/index it across many sources. - **[Google Dataset Search](https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/)** — Indexes **tens of millions** of datasets by reading [schema.org](http://schema.org) metadata across the web. - **[Google Public Data Explorer](https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory)** — Directory + visualiser over public-interest datasets (World Bank, OECD, IMF, US BLS, etc.). - **[DataCite Commons](https://commons.datacite.org/)** — Search across **~60 million** DOI-registered research outputs. - **[OpenAIRE Explore](https://explore.openaire.eu/)** — Cross-repository aggregator for European Open Science (~150M items). - **[BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)](https://www.base-search.net/)** — **~400 million** documents across academic repositories, including datasets. * * * ## 7. Directories of map, transport & traffic data Meta-lists specific to geospatial and mobility data sources. - **[NAPCORE](https://napcore.eu/)** — (Also in §2.) Directory of the EU’s 30+ mobility National Access Points. - **[Mobility Database (MobilityData)](https://mobilitydatabase.org/)** — Catalogue of **6,000+** GTFS / GTFS-RT / GBFS public-transport feeds across 99+ countries. - **[Transitland Atlas](https://www.transit.land/feeds)** — Open feed registry of GTFS / GTFS-RT / GBFS / MDS feeds from **2,500+** operators across 55+ countries. - **[OpenAddresses](https://openaddresses.io/)** — Aggregates **2,600+** open government address sources worldwide (a directory of address datasets as much as a dataset). * * * ## 9. Curated dataset lists for data journalism Curated, regularly updated lists aimed at journalists and storytellers — strong for finding _interesting_ rather than merely official datasets. - **[Data Is Plural](https://www.data-is-plural.com/)** — Jeremy Singer-Vine’s weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets, running since 2015; **1,750+** datasets, with a [browsable archive](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wZhPLMCHKJvwOkP4juclhjFgqIY8fQFMemwKL2c64vk/edit) as a “dataset of datasets.” - **[Data Liberation Project](https://www.data-liberation-project.org/)** — Initiative (now run by MuckRock + Big Local News) that obtains, documents and publishes hard-to-get government datasets of public interest. - **[FiveThirtyEight Data](https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/)** — Index of the datasets behind FiveThirtyEight’s data journalism (politics, sports, science, economics), released as plain CSVs. - **[BuzzFeed News GitHub](https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews)** — Data and analysis behind BuzzFeed News investigations. - **[ProPublica Data Store](https://www.propublica.org/datastore/)** — Datasets compiled and cleaned by ProPublica’s investigative team (many free, some priced). - **[The Pudding](https://github.com/the-pudding/data)** — Datasets underlying The Pudding’s visual essays. - **[Awesome Public Datasets](https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets)** — (Also in §1.) Widely used by data journalists as a starting point. * * * ## 10. Directories of open design & creative assets Meta-lists of openly licensed creative assets (icons, fonts, images, CC media). - **[Open Source Design – Resources](https://opensourcedesign.net/resources/)** — Curated directory of openly licensed icons, fonts, images, CC media and design tools. The best single meta-list for creative open assets. - **[Openverse](https://openverse.org/)** — Search engine indexing **800 million+** openly licensed and public-domain images and audio files across hundreds of sources; WordPress Foundation successor to CC Search. - **[Creative Commons Search](https://search.creativecommons.org/)** — Meta-search across CC-licensed works. * * * ## 11. Directories for data preservation & “data rescue” Meta-lists / clearinghouses of preservation efforts (especially the 2025 US federal-data rescue). - **[Data Rescue Project Portal](https://www.datarescueproject.org/)** — Clearinghouse and tracker indexing **1,000+** rescued US public datasets; co-run by IASSIST, RDAP and the Data Curation Network. - **[Public Environmental Data Partners](https://www.publicenvironmentaldatapartners.org/)** — Coalition directory of archived/mirrored environmental datasets. * * * ## 12. Standards, metrics & community references Not data sources, but the infrastructure and benchmarks that catalogue or rank them. - **[Open Data Charter](https://opendatacharter.org/)** — International principles for open data publication. - **[Open Knowledge Foundation](https://okfn.org/)** — Organisation behind CKAN, the Open Data Handbook and the Global Open Data Index. - **[Global Open Data Index](https://index.okfn.org/)** — Country-level open-data openness ranking (now mostly historical). - **[Open Data Maturity Report (EU)](https://data.europa.eu/en/dashboard/2024)** — Annual EU benchmarking of national open data maturity. - **[Open Data Watch / ODIN](https://odin.opendatawatch.com/)** — Global benchmark of national statistical-office data openness. ---
**Author:** ![shenol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@shenol](https://fairtechforum.com/u/shenol)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 10:32am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-data-sources/19/2 "2026-04-20T10:32:49Z")
Useful. I need to find a tool which analyzes all this data. ---
**Author:** ![mona](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee7513/32.png) [@mona](https://fairtechforum.com/u/mona)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 11:16am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-data-sources/19/3 "2026-04-29T11:16:22Z")
Wow this is a nice collection! Thanks for compiling these, makes it easier to explore. ---
**Author:** ![Moderator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Moderator](https://fairtechforum.com/u/Moderator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2026, 9:35am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-data-sources/19/4 "2026-05-28T09:35:40Z")
# Open data — individual sources _In this post we present a curated overview of **individual open data sources** : portals, repositories, databases, datasets and openly licensed asset collections. For directories and curated lists of these sources (meta-directories), see the wiki post above. This is a wiki post, so you can add to this post; please feel free to enrich/improve where you can!!_ _Note: Links live as of the date this list was produced. Items marked ⚠ are not strictly open-licensed (controlled access, partial open, or commercial-with-free-tier) and are flagged inline._ * * * ## 1. Cross-domain (general) Large general-purpose open datasets and knowledge bases that don’t fit a single domain. - **[Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/)** — Wikimedia’s free, collaborative, multilingual structured knowledge base; **~115 million** items, CC0. The data backbone behind Wikipedia. - **[DBpedia](https://www.dbpedia.org/)** — Structured knowledge extracted from Wikipedia, queryable via SPARQL; millions of entities across 125+ languages, interlinked to other Linked Open Data datasets. - **[Kaggle Datasets](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets)** — **~400,000+** datasets, community-curated and tied to ML competitions/notebooks. - **[Hugging Face Datasets](https://huggingface.co/datasets)** — **~500,000+** datasets, ML-focused, with built-in tooling. - **[Registry of Open Data on AWS](https://registry.opendata.aws/)** — Open datasets hosted on AWS (Common Crawl, Sentinel imagery, genomics, climate, transport); free to access. - **[freeCodeCamp Open Data](https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/open-data)** — Open datasets, analyses and demos published monthly by the freeCodeCamp community. * * * ## 2. Government & intergovernmental portals Official open data portals run by governments and intergovernmental organisations — typically the largest single sources. ### Pan-European / EU institutions - **[data.europa.eu](https://data.europa.eu/)** — The official portal for European data. **~1.5 million datasets** aggregated from 36+ European countries, EU institutions, agencies and bodies. Built on CKAN. - **[Eurostat](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat)** — The EU’s statistical office; thousands of official statistical datasets. - **[European Environment Agency (EEA) data hub](https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/datahub)** — Environment-focused data hub of the EEA. - **[INSPIRE Geoportal](https://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/)** — Pan-European geospatial open data under the INSPIRE Directive. ### National (selected, by data volume / relevance) - **[Data.gov (USA)](https://data.gov/)** — **~300,000+** federal, state, local and tribal datasets. Built on CKAN. ⚠ politically volatile in 2025–2026; see §11 archives. - **[data.gov.uk](https://www.data.gov.uk/)** — **~70,000+** UK government datasets. - **[Government of Canada – Open Government](https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data)** — **~40,000+** federal datasets. - **[data.gouv.fr](https://www.data.gouv.fr/)** — French government open data; **~50,000+** datasets including local authorities. - **[GovData.de](https://www.govdata.de/)** — Open data portal of the German Federation, Länder and municipalities. - **[data.overheid.nl](https://data.overheid.nl/)** — Dutch government open data portal; ~25,000+ datasets. - **[data.gov.in (India)](https://data.gov.in/)** — Indian Open Government Data platform. - **[data.gov.au (Australia)](https://data.gov.au/)** — National open data portal. - **[data.gov.sg (Singapore)](https://data.gov.sg/)** — Often cited as a quality benchmark. ### City-level (selected examples) - **[NYC Open Data](https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/)** — ~3,000+ datasets; one of the largest, best-maintained city portals. - **[London Datastore](https://data.london.gov.uk/)** — Greater London Authority open data. - **[Paris Open Data](https://opendata.paris.fr/)** — City of Paris open data. - **[Data Amsterdam](https://data.amsterdam.nl/)** — City of Amsterdam open data. ### Intergovernmental / international organisations - **[World Bank Open Data](https://data.worldbank.org/)** — Thousands of global development, economy and poverty indicators. Free, APIs. - **[UN Data](https://data.un.org/)** — UN statistical databases aggregating dozens of agencies. - **[OECD Data](https://data.oecd.org/)** — Comparable statistics across OECD members. - **[IMF Data](https://data.imf.org/)** — Economic and financial data from the IMF. - **[WHO – Global Health Observatory](https://www.who.int/data/gho)** — World Health Organization’s data portal. - **[FAOSTAT](https://www.fao.org/faostat/)** — Food and agriculture data from 245+ countries. * * * ## 3. Scientific & research data repositories (generalist) Multidisciplinary repositories for research data — usually with DOI assignment, versioning and metadata standards. - **[Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/)** — CERN/OpenAIRE generalist research repository; millions of records, 50 GB per record, DOIs included. - **[Figshare](https://figshare.com/)** — Generalist repository; millions of items. Free for public deposits. - **[Dryad](https://datadryad.org/)** — Curated research-data repository with editorial review; partners with many journals. - **[Harvard Dataverse](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/)** — Large Dataverse instance; **150,000+** datasets across disciplines. - **[Mendeley Data](https://data.mendeley.com/)** — Elsevier-operated generalist research data repository. - **[Open Science Framework (OSF)](https://osf.io/)** — Free, open-source project hosting + repository; Center for Open Science. - **[UCI Machine Learning Repository](https://archive.ics.uci.edu/)** — UC Irvine; one of the oldest and most-cited collections of ML benchmark datasets. - **[Yelp Open Dataset](https://www.yelp.com/dataset)** — Large subset of Yelp businesses/reviews/users as JSON, for academic and educational use. - **[LODUM (University of Münster)](https://lodum.de/)** — University open-data initiative publishing institutional data as Linked Open Data. * * * ## 4. Scientific & research data repositories (domain-specific) Major discipline-specific repositories — usually the canonical source for their field. ### Life sciences & biomedical - **[NCBI / GenBank](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/)** — Genetic sequence database; hundreds of millions of records. - **[European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena)** — EMBL-EBI sequence archive, fully open. - **[European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/)** — Umbrella for dozens of databases (UniProt, Ensembl, ChEMBL, etc.). - **[UniProt](https://www.uniprot.org/)** — Protein sequence/function; ~250M sequences in TrEMBL, ~570k reviewed in Swiss-Prot. - **[Ensembl](https://www.ensembl.org/)** — Genome annotation; EMBL-EBI / Wellcome Sanger. - **[Protein Data Bank (PDB)](https://www.rcsb.org/)** — 3D macromolecular structures; ~220,000+. - **[AlphaFold Protein Structure Database](https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/)** — EMBL-EBI + DeepMind; 200M+ predicted protein structures. - **[Sequence Read Archive (SRA)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra)** — NCBI raw sequencing data. - **[GEO – Gene Expression Omnibus](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/)** — NCBI gene-expression series. - **[GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/)** — **2+ billion** species occurrence records. - **[UK Biobank](https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/)** — ⚠ 500,000-participant cohort; access-controlled. ### Earth observation, climate & environmental science - **[Copernicus Data Space](https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/)** — Sentinel satellite data from the EU’s Copernicus programme. - **[NASA Open Data](https://data.nasa.gov/)** — **~40,000+** datasets from NASA missions. - **[NASA Earthdata](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/)** — NASA’s Earth science data across all DAAC archives. - **[USGS Earth Explorer](https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/)** — Landsat, aerial and elevation data. - **[Pangaea](https://www.pangaea.de/)** — Earth & environmental science data publisher; ~400,000+ datasets. - **[Climate Data Store (Copernicus CDS)](https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/)** — Climate data, reanalyses and projections. - **[ECMWF Open Data](https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data)** — Open weather forecast data. - **[NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD)](https://www.noaa.gov/information-technology/open-data-dissemination)** — NOAA Earth observation data on AWS/Azure/GCP. - **[OBIS](https://obis.org/)** — IOC-UNESCO; \>100M marine biodiversity occurrences. - **[EMODnet](https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/)** — European Marine Observation and Data Network. - **[Global Forest Watch](https://www.globalforestwatch.org/)** — WRI; near-real-time deforestation/land-use data. ### Astronomy & physics - **[CERN Open Data Portal](https://opendata.cern.ch/)** — Real LHC collision data + simulations. - **[NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)](https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/)** — Objects beyond the Milky Way. - **[ESA Science Archives](https://archives.esac.esa.int/)** — Mission data from ESA spacecraft. - **[HEPData](https://www.hepdata.net/)** — High-energy physics data tables; Durham University + CERN. ### Social sciences & economics - **[ICPSR](https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/)** — **~500,000+** files of social science research. - **[FRED](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/)** — **~800,000+** economic time series from 100+ sources. - **[UK Data Service](https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/)** — UK’s largest collection of economic, population and social data. - **[CESSDA Data Catalogue](https://www.cessda.eu/)** — Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives. - **[IPUMS](https://www.ipums.org/)** — Harmonised census and survey microdata, global. ### Linguistics & language - **[CLARIN](https://www.clarin.eu/)** — Pan-European language-resources research infrastructure (ERIC). - **[Mozilla Common Voice](https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/)** — Crowdsourced speech; 30,000+ validated hours, 100+ languages, CC0. - **[LDC](https://www.ldc.upenn.edu/)** — ⚠ Linguistic Data Consortium; open catalogue, mostly licensed resources. - **[OPUS](https://opus.nlpl.eu/)** — Open parallel corpora. ### Humanities & cultural heritage - **[Europeana](https://www.europeana.eu/)** — **~50 million+** digitised cultural-heritage items from 3,000+ institutions. - **[DPLA](https://dp.la/)** — **~50 million+** items from US libraries, archives and museums. - **[Open Context](https://opencontext.org/)** — 1M+ CC-licensed archaeological resources. - **[Smithsonian Open Access](https://www.si.edu/openaccess)** — 4.5M+ CC0 records. * * * ## 5. Search engines & cross-portal aggregators Tools that don’t host data themselves but index it across many sources. - **[Google Dataset Search](https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/)** — Indexes tens of millions of datasets via [schema.org](http://schema.org) metadata. - **[Google Public Data Explorer](https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory)** — Visualiser over World Bank / OECD / IMF / US BLS data. - **[DataCite Commons](https://commons.datacite.org/)** — Search across ~60M DOI-registered research outputs. - **[OpenAIRE Explore](https://explore.openaire.eu/)** — EU aggregator of open research products (~150M items). - **[BASE](https://www.base-search.net/)** — ~400M documents across academic repositories, including datasets. * * * ## 6. Industry / specialised Open data for specific industries or use cases. - **[Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)](https://data.humdata.org/)** — UN OCHA; **~25,000+** datasets from 1,800+ organisations across 250+ locations. - **[OpenCorporates](https://opencorporates.com/)** — **~225 million+** company records from 130+ jurisdictions. - **[GLEIF (Legal Entity Identifier)](https://www.gleif.org/)** — ~2.7M global legal entity identifiers. - **[OpenSanctions](https://www.opensanctions.org/)** — Aggregated sanctions and PEP lists; ~1M+ entities. - **[OFAC Sanctions Lists](https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/)** — US Treasury sanctions data. - **[OECD Tax Database](https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/tax-database/)** — Comparative tax data across OECD countries. - **[CORE](https://core.ac.uk/)** — **~290 million** open-access research papers + metadata. - **[Patents: Google Patents Public Data](https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/google_patents_public_datasets/google-patents-public-data)**, **[EPO Open Patent Services](https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/data/web-services/ops.html)**, **[USPTO Open Data](https://data.uspto.gov/)**, **[Lens.org](https://www.lens.org/)** — global open patent data. - **[ENTSO-E Transparency Platform](https://transparency.entsoe.eu/)** — Pan-European electricity market data from 42 TSOs across 35 countries. - **[EIA Open Data (US)](https://www.eia.gov/opendata/)** — US Energy Information Administration. - **[ECB Data Portal](https://data.ecb.europa.eu/)** — European Central Bank. - **[SEC EDGAR](https://www.sec.gov/edgar/sec-api-documentation)** — US securities filings. - **[GDELT Project](https://www.gdeltproject.org/)** — Quarter-billion+ global news event records since 1979; via Google BigQuery. - **[CourtListener](https://www.courtlistener.com/)** — Free Law Project; 10M+ legal opinions, ~17M PACER docs, 16,191 judges. - **[EUR-Lex Open Data](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/welcome/data.html)** — EU legal documents, 24 languages. * * * ## 7. Map, geospatial, transport & traffic data Openly licensed map data, public-transport feeds, real-time traffic, speed limits, addresses, boundaries and related infrastructure. ### Foundational map data - **[OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/)** — World’s largest crowdsourced open geographic database (OSMF, since 2004); billions of features under ODbL. Planet dump (~85 GB PBF) updated minutely. Speed-limit coverage is partial (~12% of roads tagged). - **[Overture Maps Foundation](https://overturemaps.org/)** — Open map data from AWS, Meta, Microsoft, TomTom + 30 members (Linux Foundation). Quarterly GeoParquet releases: Places, Buildings, Transportation, Base, Addresses, Divisions. - **[Natural Earth](https://www.naturalearthdata.com/)** — Public-domain vector + raster map data at 1:10m/1:50m/1:110m scales. - **[GADM](https://gadm.org/)** — Administrative boundaries to 5 levels; v4.1 has 400,276 areas, v5 released Jan 2026. ⚠ non-commercial only. - **[geoBoundaries](https://www.geoboundaries.org/)** — CC BY administrative boundaries for every country; commercial use allowed. - **[Who’s on First](https://whosonfirst.org/)** — Gazetteer of administrative places with structured identifiers. - **[GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/)** — 25M+ geographic names, CC BY. - **[OurAirports](https://ourairports.com/)** — ~85,000 airports worldwide, CC0. ### OSM extracts, tooling & derivatives - **[Geofabrik Downloads](https://download.geofabrik.de/)** — Daily OSM extracts by country/subdivision; PBF + Shapefile. The de facto standard server. - **[BBBike Extracts](https://extract.bbbike.org/)** — Free user-defined OSM extracts of any polygon; many formats. - **[Protomaps](https://protomaps.com/)** — Subscription-free map tiles; slice arbitrary OSM regions. - **[Mapillary](https://www.mapillary.com/)** — Crowdsourced street-level imagery (CC BY-SA); 2B+ images. - **[KartaView](https://kartaview.org/)** — Open street-level imagery alternative to Mapillary. ### Addresses - **[OpenAddresses](https://openaddresses.io/)** — Aggregates **2,600+** open government address sources; ~600M addresses worldwide. - **[Overture Addresses theme](https://docs.overturemaps.org/guides/addresses/)** — Growing global open address dataset in Overture’s releases. ### Public transport — feeds - **[Mobility Database (MobilityData)](https://mobilitydatabase.org/)** — **6,000+** GTFS / GTFS-RT / GBFS feeds across 99+ countries; daily freshness checks. Maintained by [MobilityData](https://mobilitydata.org/). - **[Transitland](https://www.transit.land/)** — Aggregator of feeds from **2,500+** operators across 55+ countries; APIs + Transitland Atlas (CC BY). - **[GTFS.org](https://gtfs.org/)** / **[GBFS spec](https://gbfs.org/)** — Canonical specification sites (MobilityData). ### National Access Points for mobility (EU) Under EU ITS Directive 2010/40/EU and its Delegated Regulations, every member state must run a **National Access Point (NAP)** for mobility data (real-time traffic, multimodal travel, truck parking, EV charging). **30+** operational. - **[NDW – Nationaal Dataportaal Wegverkeer (NL)](https://www.ndw.nu/)** — Dutch NAP; real-time + historical traffic, work-zones (“Melvin”), bike counts via [Dexter](https://opendata.ndw.nu/). Also hosts the **[NWB](https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/zakelijk/open-data/nationaal-wegen-bestand)** base road map. - **[Mobilithèque (FR)](https://transport.data.gouv.fr/)** — French NAP. - **[Mobilithek (DE)](https://mobilithek.info/)** — German NAP (BMDV). - **[Punto de Acceso Nacional (ES)](https://nap.transportes.gob.es/)** — Spanish NAP. - **[Trafiklab (SE)](https://www.trafiklab.se/)** / **[Entur (NO)](https://developer.entur.org/)** — Nordic transport-data hubs. ### Real-time traffic — open feeds Truly open live traffic is rare (TomTom, HERE, Mapbox, INRIX, Google sell it). The open exceptions are mainly EU NAPs and national road authorities. - **[NDW Real-time data](https://opendata.ndw.nu/)** — Dutch real-time speeds/flows/incidents (DATEX II). - **[transport.data.gouv.fr (FR)](https://transport.data.gouv.fr/)** — French DATEX II real-time road feeds. - **[National Highways DATEX II (UK)](https://www.trafficengland.com/)** — Real-time motorway flow/incidents. - **[511 systems (US, by state)](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/trafficinfo/511.htm)** — US state-level real-time traffic feeds. - **[Waze for Cities](https://www.waze.com/wazeforcities)** — ⚠ reciprocal city partnership data (not strictly open). ### Speed limits - **[OpenStreetMap `maxspeed`](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:maxspeed)** — Tagged speed limits; ~12% explicit coverage, combine with country defaults. - **[OSM Default Speed Limits library](https://github.com/westnordost/osm-legal-default-speeds)** — Legal default speed limits per country/road type; used by GraphHopper, Valhalla, StreetComplete. - **[NDW maximum speeds (NL)](https://www.ndw.nu/)** — Authoritative Dutch speed-limit feeds. - **[National Highways speed-limit data (UK)](https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/speed-limit)** — Strategic Road Network speed limits. ### Aviation, maritime & rail - **[OpenSky Network](https://opensky-network.org/)** — Community ADS-B + Mode S aircraft tracking; \>30 trillion messages. - **[ADS-B Exchange](https://www.adsbexchange.com/)** — Unfiltered live ADS-B; free historical data. - **[Global Fishing Watch](https://globalfishingwatch.org/)** — Open AIS-derived global fishing activity. - **[AISHub](https://www.aishub.net/)** — Community AIS vessel-tracking exchange. ### Cycling, walking, micromobility & EV charging - **[Open Charge Map](https://openchargemap.org/)** — Global open EV-charging registry; ~800,000+ points. - **[CycleStreets](https://www.cyclestreets.net/)** — Open cycle-routing data and tools. - **[Strava Metro](https://metro.strava.com/)** — ⚠ aggregated cycling/walking data; free for agencies, not open-licensed. ### Routing & isochrone engines (open backends) - **[OpenRouteService](https://openrouteservice.org/)** — Free OSM-based routing/isochrones/matrix API (HeiGIT). - **[OSRM](http://project-osrm.org/)**, **[Valhalla](https://valhalla.github.io/valhalla/)**, **[GraphHopper](https://www.graphhopper.com/open-source/)** — Open-source OSM routing engines. * * * ## 8. AI training data corpora Large openly licensed datasets used to train ML / generative-AI models. These carry distinctive legal and ethical caveats, noted inline. - **[Common Crawl](https://commoncrawl.org/)** — Open web-crawl repository; **10+ petabytes** since 2008, refreshed ~monthly (2B+ pages each). The dominant text source behind most LLMs. ⚠ a Nov 2025 investigation alleged it under-honoured publisher opt-outs. - **[LAION](https://laion.ai/)** — German non-profit; **Re-LAION-5B** (Aug 2024) is the safety-rescreened replacement for the withdrawn LAION-5B (~5.5B text-image pairs). Backbone of Stable Diffusion. - **[Common Pile v0.1](https://github.com/r-three/common-pile)** — EleutherAI’s ~8 TB copyright-clean text corpus (June 2025); successor to The Pile. - **[The Stack v2](https://huggingface.co/datasets/bigcode/the-stack-v2)** — BigCode/Hugging Face; permissively licensed source-code corpus. - **[Mozilla Common Voice](https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/)** — Open speech corpus; 30,000+ hours, 100+ languages, CC0. - **[Pile of Law](https://huggingface.co/datasets/pile-of-law/pile-of-law)** — Open ~256 GB legal-text corpus. - **[Have I Been Trained? (Spawning.ai)](https://haveibeentrained.com/)** — Tool to search LAION-style datasets and opt images out of training. > Caveat: AI corpora sit at the contested edge of “open data.” Copyright (The Pile/Books3), consent (LAION CSAM removal) and opt-out compliance (Common Crawl) are live issues. Verify licences before reuse. * * * ## 9. Data-journalism datasets The individual data collections published by data-journalism teams (the curated _lists_ of these live in §9 of the meta-directories file). - **[FiveThirtyEight Data](https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/)** — Datasets behind FiveThirtyEight’s stories, as plain CSVs. - **[ProPublica Data Store](https://www.propublica.org/datastore/)** — ⚠ ProPublica investigative datasets (many free, some priced). - **[The Pudding](https://github.com/the-pudding/data)** — Datasets underlying The Pudding’s visual essays. - **[BuzzFeed News GitHub](https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews)** — Data and analysis behind BuzzFeed News investigations. * * * ## 10. Open design & creative assets Openly licensed creative assets: icons, fonts, images, audio/video, colour systems. ### Icons - **[The Noun Project](https://thenounproject.com/)** — Vast library of CC and purchasable icons. - **[Tabler Icons](https://tabler-icons.io/)**, **[Remix Icon](https://remixicon.com/)**, **[Iconoir](https://iconoir.com/)**, **[Font Awesome (Free)](https://fontawesome.com/)** — large MIT/CC open SVG icon sets. ### Fonts - **[Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/)** — Hundreds of open-licensed (mostly OFL) families. - **[The League of Moveable Type](https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/)** — Curated open-source typefaces. - **[Open Font Library](https://fontlibrary.org/)** — Community libre-font repository. - **[Velvetyne](https://velvetyne.fr/)**, **[Open Foundry](https://open-foundry.com/)**, **[Use & Modify](https://usemodify.com/)** — libre type foundries. ### Images & photos - **[Openverse](https://openverse.org/)** — **800M+** openly licensed and public-domain images and audio (CC Search successor). - **[Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/)** — **~110 million** freely licensed media files. - **[Flickr Creative Commons](https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/)** — Large CC-licensed photo pool. - **[Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/)**, **[Pexels](https://www.pexels.com/)**, **[Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/)**, **[StockSnap](https://stocksnap.io/)** — large free-to-use photo libraries. - **[NYPL Public Domain Collections](https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/digital-collections/public-domain)** — public-domain digitised images. - **[Smithsonian Open Access](https://www.si.edu/openaccess)** — 4.5M+ CC0 images and records. - **[Rijksmuseum](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio)** and **[The Met Open Access](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection)** — CC0 fine-art image collections. - **[unDraw](https://undraw.co/)**, **[Open Doodles](https://www.opendoodles.com/)** — open illustration sets. ### CC media (audio / video) - **[Free Music Archive](https://freemusicarchive.org/)** — open/CC music library. - **[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/creativecommons)** and **[SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/creativecommons)** Creative Commons pools. ### Colour & design systems - **[Leonardo (Adobe, open source)](https://leonardocolor.io/)** — accessible colour-contrast generator. - **[Color Hunt](https://colorhunt.co/)** and **[colors.lol](https://colors.lol/)** — open colour palettes. * * * ## 11. Data preservation, archives & “data rescue” Resources focused on preserving open datasets — increasingly important given the 2025 US federal data removals. - **[Harvard Library Innovation Lab – Data.gov Archive](https://lil.law.harvard.edu/)** — **311,000+** datasets (~16 TB) harvested from [Data.gov](http://Data.gov) in 2024–2025; updated daily. - **[DataLumos (ICPSR)](https://www.datalumos.org/)** — Crowdsourced repository for archiving at-risk US government data. - **[Internet Archive – Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/)** — Web-scale archive including government data pages. - **[End of Term Web Archive](https://eotarchive.org/)** — Archives US federal websites at each administration’s end. - **[Source Cooperative](https://source.coop/)** — Data-publishing utility hosting open datasets and archives (incl. the [Data.gov](http://Data.gov) archive). * * * ## 12. Standards, tooling & community Not data sources themselves — the infrastructure that produces and packages open data. - **[Open Data Commons](https://opendatacommons.org/)** — Standard open-data licences (ODbL, ODC-By, PDDL). - **[CKAN](https://ckan.org/)** — Leading open-source data-portal platform; powers [Data.gov](http://Data.gov), [data.gov.uk](http://data.gov.uk) and many national portals. - **[Open Data Kit (ODK)](https://getodk.org/)** — Open-source field data-collection tools. - **[Frictionless Data](https://frictionlessdata.io/)** — OKFN tooling and specs (Data Packages). - **[DataCite](https://datacite.org/)** — Global DOI registration for research outputs. - **[Schema.org Dataset vocabulary](https://schema.org/Dataset)** — Markup that makes datasets findable by Google Dataset Search.