City, Toronto Open Data API

Government / No Auth Required Beginner HTTPS CORS
Free to Use
64 C
Measured Score 0 50 100 Speed 20/30 Consistency 20/20 Security 20/20 Browser access 0/15 Transparency 4/15 TESTED 2026-08-10

Overview

City, Toronto Open Data is Canada's largest municipal open data portal, providing free access to datasets on transit, parks, permits, and public health. No authentication is required, so you can start querying immediately. It also uses the CKAN API, which is widely used by government portals worldwide.

Beginner Tip

Use the CKAN datastore_search action with a resource_id to fetch records from any Toronto dataset—find the resource_id by browsing the dataset page on open.toronto.ca.

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request
GET https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/api/3/action/package_list
Result
HTTP 200 · application/json · 21,496 bytes
Response time
154 ms (median of 3) · fastest 151 ms
Transport
TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Amazon
Browser CORS
No Access-Control-Allow-Origin header — call it from a server, not the browser
Recorded
2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Field Type Value received
help string (url) https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.…
success boolean true
result array [1 item]

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/api/3/action/package_list on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

JSON Response · Captured
{
  "help": "https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/api/3/action/help_show?name=package_list",
  "success": true,
  "result": [
    "10-year-cycling-network-plan-on-street-2016"
  ]
}

Field Reference

success True if the CKAN API action completed without errors.
result The returned data—either a list of package names or a records object depending on the action.

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

Request
const url = "https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/api/3/action/package_list";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

What Can You Build?

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

HTTP 404 Requesting a path that does not exist text/html

Returned an HTML error page rather than JSON — worth knowing if your client assumes every response can be parsed as JSON.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.

404 Not Found The resource_id or package name does not exist or has been renamed.
Browse open.toronto.ca to confirm the current resource ID from the dataset page.
Connection refused The CKAN API endpoint URL is incorrect.
Use the correct base URL: ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca for the Toronto CKAN API.
Slow response on large datasets Fetching too many records at once from a large dataset.
Use the limit and offset parameters to paginate through results instead of requesting all records.

Measured Score Breakdown

Live HTTP request to the API endpoint

Speed 20/30
Consistency 20/20
Security 20/20
Browser access 0/15
Transparency 4/15
Endpoint Response Time 154ms

Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026

Technical Specifications

Auth No Auth
HTTPS REQUIRED
CORS YES
Category Government
Difficulty Beginner
Endpoint last called: 2026-08-10

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