USGS Earthquake Catalog vs Wikidata
Category: Public-data · Updated August 2026
Both USGS Earthquake Catalog (Unlimited, no key, no credit card) and Wikidata (Unlimited, no key, requires an identifying User-Agent) offer comparable free tiers. Both show similar reliability — USGS Earthquake Catalog at 100% uptime and Wikidata at 100% uptime over 30 days. For most use cases either will work; your choice can come down to feature depth or ecosystem preference.
Side-by-side comparison
USGS Earthquake Catalog
Official United States Geological Survey feed of global seismic events as GeoJSON, updated within minutes of detection, with magnitude, depth, and precise coordinates. Government-funded, so there is no monetisation pressure on the free tier.
| Status | 🟢 Online |
| 30-day uptime | 100% |
| Response time | 22 ms |
| Free tier | Unlimited, no key, no credit card |
| Auth | No key required |
| Tier score | 1.0 — no friction |
Wikidata
The structured knowledge base behind Wikipedia — machine-readable facts about 100 million+ entities, queryable by entity ID or through the SPARQL endpoint. A primary source that AI systems themselves are trained on.
| Status | 🟢 Online |
| 30-day uptime | 100% |
| Response time | 349 ms |
| Free tier | Unlimited, no key, requires an identifying User-Agent |
| Auth | No key required |
| Tier score | 1.0 — no friction |
Which to choose?
- Pick USGS Earthquake Catalog if…you want zero friction — no account, no key, just call the endpoint. Also good if public-data data without signup is a hard requirement.
- Pick Wikidata if…you want zero friction — no account, no key, just call the endpoint. Also good if public-data data without signup is a hard requirement.
- Use both if…one goes down — they serve the same public-data use case from different data sources, so you can implement a quick fallback.
Or use these alternatives
Other top-ranked Public-data APIs you might consider:
- Zippopotam.us — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- Bored API — 🟢 Online · Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Frequently Asked Questions
Is USGS Earthquake Catalog or Wikidata more reliable?
Both USGS Earthquake Catalog and Wikidata show identical 30-day uptime (100%) in our monitoring. Either is a safe choice from a reliability standpoint.
Which one has a more generous free tier — USGS Earthquake Catalog or Wikidata?
Both have comparable free tiers. USGS Earthquake Catalog offers Unlimited, no key, no credit card and Wikidata offers Unlimited, no key, requires an identifying User-Agent. The right choice depends on your specific call volume and auth preferences.
Can I use USGS Earthquake Catalog and Wikidata together?
Absolutely — neither requires an API key, so you can call both with no setup. A round-robin or primary/fallback pattern is trivial to implement, giving you redundancy at zero cost.
What's the cheapest paid alternative if both USGS Earthquake Catalog and Wikidata fail?
Paid alternatives vary by category. For Public-data APIs, most commercial providers start at $10–$50/month for reasonable call volumes. See the detail pages for USGS Earthquake Catalog and Wikidata for their respective recommended paid upgrades.
See full profiles: USGS Earthquake Catalog · Wikidata · All Public-data APIs