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World Bank Open Data

by World Bank Group · Data service · also known as World Bank Indicators API, World Development Indicators, WDI, Data360

Free access to World Bank development indicators by country and year through a web portal, bulk downloads and a public REST API

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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

World Bank Open Data is the World Bank Group's portal for its statistical databases, chief among them the World Development Indicators, along with debt, poverty, education, gender and project datasets. Indicators are available by country, region and income group over several decades, downloadable as CSV or Excel, and queryable through the Indicators API, an unauthenticated REST service returning JSON or XML for countries, indicators and sources with simple filters and paging. Wrappers exist for Python (wbgapi), R (WDI) and Stata, and the data catalogue adds metadata and licence information for each dataset, most under Creative Commons Attribution terms. It is used for cross-country macro panels, development research and teaching. Coverage gaps and revisions are common for low-income countries, indicator definitions can change between releases, and sub-national or high-frequency data are limited.

Capabilities

  • Country-year indicators across economic and social topics
  • Public REST API returning JSON or XML without an API key
  • Bulk CSV and Excel downloads
  • Data catalogue with metadata and licences
  • Wrappers for Python, R and Stata

Typical workflows

  1. Build a cross-country panel of GDP, inflation and credit indicators
  2. Fetch indicator metadata to document variable definitions in a paper

Strengths

  • No authentication required
  • Long time series and wide country coverage
  • Open licensing for most datasets

Limitations

  • Missing values and revisions for many countries
  • Mostly annual frequency
  • Limited sub-national detail

Prerequisites

  • HTTP client or wrapper library

Who it is for

  • Development and macro economists
  • Students and journalists
  • Policy analysts

Alternatives & comparison

IMF Data focuses on macro-financial and fiscal statistics with SDMX access; Eurostat covers EU member states in depth. Statistics Canada and FRED give national and monthly detail that World Bank annual indicators lack.

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Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Broken · Nov 2, 2026

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