General
Why would I use Infochimps?
From baseball stats to every tweet ever written to what you ate for breakfast for the last year, the world is full of data. It's interesting, but it's not always in a format that we or our machines can easily understand or interpret.
Infochimps is a place for people to find, share and sell formatted data. Both users and Infochimps employees scrape, parse and format data so that it's easily accessible to you. We take the chimp work out of working with data so you can start building cool stuff in minutes.
Do I have to pay to use this site?
It is free to sign up for an Infochimps account. Once you have a free account, you’ll find that many of the data sets available on our site are free. Some require attribution, and others are available for purchase.
Your first 100,000 data API calls per month are free. We offer subscriptions if you would like to use more. See the API plans page for more pricing information.
What kind of licensing does your data use?
Licensing varies for each data set. Some are free for all kinds of use, while others are more restrictive/limited. Please check the terms prior to downloading.
Our API pricing depends on the number of API calls as well as the number of API calls you have to make per hour. Visit the API plans page for more details.
What is a data API and why would I use it?
A data API connects your newly coded software or tool to our massive repository of data. The data sets available through our API are 1) hosted for you and 2) scraped on a regular basis, saving you both time and hosting costs! Read more about our APIs here.
Where do you get your data from?
Some of the data is scraped by us, some of it is submitted by our partners, and some of it comes from upstanding Infochimps customers like yourself. Partner sources include Twitter, Wikipedia, OKCupid, Data.gov and many more!
Finding Data
What kind of formats can I find on your site?
Formatting varies for each data set. Most of our data comes in tsv, csv or yaml format.
I didn't find the data set I was looking for. What should I do?
No worries, contact us and make a request. We'll do our best to try and find the data for you.
Feedback
I found something that is broken on the site. What should I do?
Don't freak out. We still love you. Please notify us and we will get on it stat.
Where can I make feature requests?
We are all about making your life easier. Tell us how we can do that at our User Voice.
I see a mistake in a data set. What should I do?
Good on you for helping us make sure our data is accurate! Please notify us and we will get on it stat.
I found a data set that violates copyright. What should I do?
Read our copyright policy and then contact us. We will look into it promptly.
I found spam on your site and it hurts my soul. What should I do?
Just contact us and tell us about it. We don't like spam either.
Submitting Data
If I find an interesting data set, can I give it to you?
Indeed. Login, sign up, and you will be walked through the process using this data uploading tool.
Can I give away data and just ask for attribution for it?
Sure. Just make sure to specify this when you are uploading it.
What formats do you accept data in?
Any format is acceptable on our site. Most of the community would prefer data that is in tab-separated-value (TSV) or comma-separated-value (CSV) format. However, we recognize many data sets have a native format, such as JSON, that's unique to their user demographic. If this is true, post what's useful for your community.
How long does it take?
It depends on how big the data set is. Smaller data sets can take less than five minutes to upload. If you have any questions about uploading data sets larger than 1 GB, please contact us.
Are there data sets that are inappropriate or that don't belong on Infochimps?
In general we are looking to be a comprehensive collection of all of the worlds' data. However there are some data sets we will remove after we find them in our catalog. Our process is to email the submitter of the data set before we delete their data set unless we have cause to delete it immediately. We will contact a user and delete their data set:
- 1) If it's spam
- 2) If it's a test
- 3) If it's gibberish
- 4) If it's been lacking an upload or link for 2+ weeks
- 5) If it contains Personally Identifying Information (PII) from non-consenting individuals
- 6) If it's misleading advertising, or a bait and switch
- 7) If a copyright holder has gotten in touch with us under DMCA Guidelines
- 8) We reserve the right to remove content we feel does not belong in our collection or could potentially harm our users and their experience on the site
Selling Data
How easy is it to sell data on your site?
Selling data on our site is easy. Create an account, agree to the vendor agreement, and then let us know where to send the checks.
What revenue share model do you use?
We use a traditional app store model. Sellers get 70 percent of all sales, and we receive 30 percent.
How frequently do you pay out?
Royalties are issued in the month following when your data sold. So a sale in February will result in you receiving royalties before March 31.
How will I know when I've made a sale?
You will receive an email any time you've made a sale, and you can view your sale from your account dashboard.
Returns and Cancellations
What is your return and refund policy?
If you feel that you purchased the wrong data set in error or that the data set you purchased is faulty, you may request a refund. All refund requests are dealt on a case-by-case basis and we do not guarantee that we can honor all requests. To contact us about a refund, please use the contact form.
What is your cancellation policy?
Our subscription services bill on a monthly basis, withdrawing payment on or near the day you signed up for the service. Where our subscription services are based on the usage of a resource of a month's period, we are not able to refund accounts on a prorated basis in every case for any unused days. We reserve the right to answer requests around cancellations on a case-by-case basis. If you have any questions or would like to cancel your account, please use the contact form. contact form.