Incident-level crime data, not just totals
Crime Data API provides location-based police incident searches in covered cities, while FBI data supplies city-wide rates. The score endpoint uses city-wide FBI rates as a fallback where covered, without a score or grade. Source coverage and local category definitions matter when comparing results across reporting systems and years.
Last updated: 2026-11-04
The FBI's Crime Data Explorer API is free and national, and it returns aggregate counts by agency, state and nation. If you need what happened near an address last week, you need incident records from city open-data portals. This API normalizes those into one schema.
| FBI Crime Data Explorer API | Crime Data API | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Counts per agency, state or nation | Individual incidents with location and time |
| Query | By agency or state | By latitude, longitude and radius |
| Freshness | Annual and monthly releases | Daily for 7 cities; quarterly for NYC |
| Coverage | National | 11 US cities at street level: San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Dallas, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Boston, Washington, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver; city-wide FBI rates for other US cities via the score fallback |
| Price | Free | 500 calls a month free, then from $29 a month |
Use both: FBI data for national and year-over-year context, this API for street-level, recent activity.
Try it: what should you know?
GET /v1/incidents?lat=37.788&lon=-122.4075&radius_m=500&category=theft_from_vehicle&limit=20
Or give an AI agent the free MCP server: https://crimedata.dev/mcp.
Data comes from each city's open-data portal under the licence shown. It is police-reported incident data, not convictions, and can be revised by the source. Compared with the FBI API · Terms · Refunds · Privacy · DPA · Contact
Operated by Shahar Frish, Israel.
What should I know about this data?
Where does the incident data come from?
Incident data comes from city open-data portals under the licence shown for each city. It is police-reported data, not convictions, and sources can revise it.
Where can I check coverage and freshness?
The city coverage pages and GET /v1/cities identify covered cities, source licences and newest record dates.
Do scores predict personal risk?
No. Scores describe incident density within a city, are not comparable across cities and do not predict personal risk.
Where can I find related information?
Crime API reference · Incident density methodology · MCP setup for AI agents