Overview
REFUGE Restrooms API helps users find safe, gender-neutral restrooms for transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming individuals. It requires no authentication, making it easy to integrate into any app. You can search by location coordinates or a text query to return nearby restroom listings.
Beginner Tip
No API key needed — just call the endpoint with latitude and longitude parameters to get nearby restrooms. The /restrooms/by_location endpoint is the most useful starting point.
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://www.refugerestrooms.org/api/v1/restrooms/by_location.json?lat=37.7749&lng=-122.4194&per_page=5
- Result
- HTTP 200 · application/json · 2,756 bytes
- Response time
- 1727 ms (median of 3) · fastest 1097 ms
- Transport
- TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Let's Encrypt
- Browser CORS
- Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
- Served by
- Heroku
- 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 |
|---|---|---|
| id | integer | 34441 |
| name | string | #makefrancegreatagain |
| street | string | #makefrancegreatagain |
| city | string | San Francisco |
| state | string | CA |
| accessible | boolean | false |
| unisex | boolean | false |
| directions | string | #makefrancegreatagain |
| comment | string | #makefrancegreatagain |
| latitude | number | 37.7749295 |
| longitude | number | -122.4194155 |
| created_at | string (date) | 2017-04-23T03:00:38.511Z |
| updated_at | string (date) | 2020-04-14T21:18:00.637Z |
| downvote | integer | 1 |
Captured Response
Captured from a real request to https://www.refugerestrooms.org/api/v1/restrooms/by_location.json?lat=37.7749&lng=-122.4194&per_page=5 on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.
[
{
"id": 34441,
"name": "#makefrancegreatagain",
"street": "#makefrancegreatagain",
"city": "San Francisco",
"state": "CA",
"accessible": false,
"unisex": false,
"directions": "#makefrancegreatagain",
"comment": "#makefrancegreatagain",
"latitude": 37.7749295,
"longitude": -122.4194155,
"created_at": "2017-04-23T03:00:38.511Z",
"updated_at": "2020-04-14T21:18:00.637Z",
"downvote": 1,
"…": "(7 more fields)"
}
] Field Reference
name Name of the restroom location (e.g., business name or building name) street Street address of the restroom city City where the restroom is located accessible Whether the restroom is ADA accessible for people with disabilities Implementation Example
Request skeleton. The URL below is this API's documentation page, not a live endpoint — swap in the path you need from the provider's docs before running it.
const url = "https://www.refugerestrooms.org/api/docs/";
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.
Returned an HTML error page rather than JSON — worth knowing if your client assumes every response can be parsed as JSON.
{
"error": "lat is invalid"
} 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.
Measured Score Breakdown
Live HTTP request to the API endpoint
Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026
Technical Specifications
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