---
title: "Free Geopolitical Data APIs in 2026"
description: "A practical comparison of ACLED, GDELT, UCDP, USGS, NASA FIRMS, Cloudflare Radar, and WorldMonitor for developers building geopolitical risk tools."
metaTitle: "Free Geopolitical Data APIs 2026 | WorldMonitor"
keywords: "free conflict data API, country risk API, geopolitical data API free, ACLED API, GDELT API, UCDP API, OSINT API"
audience: "Developers, data engineers, OSINT builders, risk analysts, product teams"
heroImage: "/blog/images/blog/build-on-worldmonitor-developer-api-open-source.jpg"
pubDate: "2026-06-10"
modifiedDate: "2026-06-13"
---

There is no single "geopolitical API." There are conflict-event databases, news firehoses, earthquake feeds, internet-outage indicators, satellite fire detections, trade datasets, weather alerts, sanctions lists, market feeds, and country-risk models. Each answers a different question.

That is good news for builders. You can assemble a serious geopolitical risk stack from free or free-to-start sources, as long as you understand the tradeoffs: coverage, freshness, authentication, licensing, and whether the data is raw signal or decision-ready context.

This guide compares seven options for 2026: [ACLED](https://acleddata.com/api-documentation/getting-started), [GDELT](https://www.gdeltproject.org/data.html), [UCDP](https://ucdp.uu.se/apidocs/), [USGS earthquakes](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/), [NASA FIRMS](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/api/), [Cloudflare Radar](https://developers.cloudflare.com/radar/), and [WorldMonitor](https://www.worldmonitor.app/docs/api-reference).

## The quick comparison

| API | Best for | Access model | Use with care |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACLED | Recent political violence, protests, riots, conflict events | myACLED account and authenticated API access | Licensing, attribution, and query design matter |
| GDELT | Global news volume, tone, entities, document search | Free and open data access | High recall; requires filtering and source-quality work |
| UCDP | Research-grade conflict datasets and historical conflict analysis | Free API with token request | Better for validated conflict records than minute-by-minute monitoring |
| USGS Earthquake Catalog | Earthquakes and seismic hazard feeds | Public web services and GeoJSON feeds | Geophysical signal, not political analysis |
| NASA FIRMS | Active fire and thermal anomaly detections | Free MAP_KEY for web services | Thermal detections need context before labeling cause |
| Cloudflare Radar | Internet traffic, outages, routing, security trends | Free Radar API with Cloudflare API token | Great infrastructure signal, not event attribution |
| WorldMonitor | Combined country risk, conflicts, markets, chokepoints, MCP/REST workflows | Public docs and dashboard; API/MCP tiers for programmatic access | Aggregated intelligence should still expose source freshness |

The right answer is usually a blend. ACLED or UCDP gives conflict structure. GDELT gives narrative velocity. USGS and FIRMS give physical-world anomalies. Cloudflare Radar gives internet infrastructure stress. WorldMonitor connects many of those signals into country, route, market, and agent-ready workflows.

## ACLED: best current conflict-event workhorse

Use ACLED when you need structured political violence and protest events with actor, event type, location, date, and fatality fields.

Good use cases:

- country-level unrest monitoring
- protest and riot trend analysis
- conflict event maps
- alerting on new events in a watchlist region
- model features for country-risk scoring

ACLED is not an anonymous unauthenticated endpoint. The current API docs say access requires a myACLED account and authentication. Treat that as a normal integration: store credentials securely, respect terms, page results correctly, and preserve attribution in downstream products.

WorldMonitor uses ACLED as one input to conflict and unrest layers, then combines it with other sources so a missing or stale feed does not masquerade as a calm country.

## GDELT: best global media firehose

GDELT is the source you reach for when you care about narrative velocity: which topics are appearing across languages, geographies, and news outlets?

The project describes its database as free and open. The value comes from what you do after retrieval:

- filter by geography, theme, source, and time window
- deduplicate repeated wire stories
- separate volume from credibility
- track whether multiple source types converge
- avoid treating tone as ground truth

Good use cases:

- breaking-news detection
- cross-source confirmation
- media attention spikes
- topic timelines for "sanctions," "cyberattack," "coup," or "blockade"
- weak-signal discovery before a human analyst reads headlines

GDELT is high-recall. That is its strength and its trap. Use it to ask "what is the world talking about?" Then pair it with structured event data before making an operational call.

## UCDP: best validated conflict history

UCDP is the source you reach for when you need academically grounded conflict datasets and definitions. Its API is free of charge, but UCDP introduced authenticated token access to protect service stability and reduce automated misuse.

Good use cases:

- historical conflict analysis
- backtesting risk models
- research-grade conflict definitions
- annual or long-horizon country-risk features
- validating whether your event taxonomy matches established datasets

UCDP is not a replacement for live monitoring. Its strength is definition quality and historical consistency. Pair it with ACLED or news/event feeds when your application needs the last few hours or days.

## USGS: best free earthquake signal

Earthquakes matter for geopolitical and supply-chain risk because they hit ports, roads, power infrastructure, undersea cables, pipelines, and dense cities. USGS provides earthquake catalog web services and real-time GeoJSON feeds that are straightforward to integrate.

Good use cases:

- earthquake alerts by magnitude and geography
- natural-disaster overlays on infrastructure maps
- supply-chain disruption triggers
- cable, nuclear, port, and airport exposure checks

USGS tells you what happened geophysically. It does not tell you whether a government response is adequate, a port is closed, or a conflict party will exploit the disruption.

## NASA FIRMS: best active fire and thermal anomaly feed

NASA FIRMS detects active fires and thermal anomalies from satellite observations. Its API and map services require a free MAP_KEY, and NASA documents transaction limits for the web services.

Good use cases:

- wildfire monitoring
- thermal anomaly detection near infrastructure
- conflict-zone fire lead generation
- smoke and disaster context for travel or logistics

Do not over-label a thermal anomaly. A heat signature can be wildfire, industrial activity, agricultural burning, or conflict-related damage. Use FIRMS as a lead, then cross-check against news, weather, official alerts, and imagery where available.

## Cloudflare Radar: best internet infrastructure context

Cloudflare Radar is useful when the geopolitical question touches connectivity: outages, routing shifts, traffic anomalies, or broader internet-health signals. Cloudflare describes the Radar API as free, with API-token authentication for requests.

Good use cases:

- internet outage monitoring
- conflict-zone connectivity checks
- cyber or infrastructure incident context
- country-level traffic anomalies

Radar is an infrastructure signal. It can suggest that something changed in a country's network environment, but attribution requires care. An outage can come from conflict, censorship, cable damage, power failure, routing errors, or provider maintenance.

## WorldMonitor: best combined intelligence workflow

WorldMonitor is not a replacement for the sources above. It is the connective layer: a way to pull many signals into country-risk, route-risk, market, news, and agent workflows without building every normalizer from scratch.

The API surface is proto-first and documented through a bundled OpenAPI spec covering 34 services. The codebase currently contains 276 `.proto` files, with generated TypeScript clients and OpenAPI docs. For AI agents, the same data is exposed through the [WorldMonitor MCP server](/blog/posts/worldmonitor-mcp-server-ai-agents-real-time-intelligence/) so Claude, Cursor, and custom MCP clients can call tools conversationally.

Good use cases:

- country-risk monitoring with conflict, sanctions, advisory, macro, and news context
- maritime chokepoint and supply-chain workflows
- market-open geopolitical prep
- OSINT verification workflows
- AI-agent access to live intelligence tools
- dashboards that need multiple domains but one consistent API pattern

The important design rule is transparency. Any combined intelligence layer should show source freshness, missing data, fallback status, and the difference between observed signals and model interpretation.

## How to choose

Start with the job, not the source:

| Job | Start with | Add next |
|---|---|---|
| Conflict event map | ACLED | UCDP for historical baseline, GDELT for narrative confirmation |
| Breaking-news verification | GDELT | WorldMonitor news intelligence, webcams, USGS/FIRMS/Radar when relevant |
| Country-risk score | WorldMonitor | ACLED, UCDP, sanctions, advisory, macro, and news sources |
| Disaster/infrastructure alert | USGS or FIRMS | Cloudflare Radar, news, port/aviation data |
| Internet outage context | Cloudflare Radar | news, conflict events, power/weather signals |
| AI analyst assistant | WorldMonitor MCP | source-specific APIs for deeper drill-down |

Most failed geopolitical data products start too broad. They ingest ten feeds, draw a big map, and leave the user to decide what matters. A better first version asks one operational question:

> Which countries, routes, commodities, or events need attention today?

Then it pulls only the signals required to answer that.

## A minimal architecture

For a small risk-monitoring app:

1. Define a watchlist of countries, routes, and commodities.
2. Pull ACLED or UCDP for conflict context depending on freshness needs.
3. Pull GDELT for narrative volume and source diversity.
4. Pull USGS/FIRMS/Radar only when the watchlist geography matches the signal.
5. Normalize everything into one event table with `source`, `observed_at`, `freshness`, `confidence_notes`, and `url`.
6. Use WorldMonitor or your own scoring layer to turn raw signals into watch/elevated/critical labels.
7. Archive the raw JSON behind each alert.

When someone asks why an alert fired, you need evidence, not a screenshot.

## Frequently Asked Questions

**What is the best free conflict data API?**

For recent structured political violence and protest events, start with ACLED. For research-grade historical conflict datasets, start with UCDP. Many production systems use both because they solve different freshness and methodology problems.

**Is GDELT a geopolitical risk API?**

GDELT is better described as a global media and event-data platform. It is excellent for narrative velocity and topic discovery, but it needs filtering, deduplication, and source-quality checks before operational use.

**Can I build an AI agent on these APIs?**

Yes, but do not make the agent scrape arbitrary pages for every answer. Give it structured tools, require freshness reporting, and separate observed signals from interpretation. WorldMonitor MCP exists for that agent-native workflow.

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**Start with one watchlist and one decision. A small grounded geopolitical API stack beats a giant unfiltered feed every time.**
