Transport for Belgium API

Overview

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://api.irail.be/stations/?format=json&lang=en

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 121,819 bytes · compressed

Response time

568 ms (median of 3) · fastest 567 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

Browser CORS

Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://apisscore.com

Served by

cloudflare

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

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

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://api.irail.be/stations/?format=json&lang=en on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "version": "1.4",
  "timestamp": "1786391656",
  "station": [
    {
      "@id": "http://irail.be/stations/NMBS/008400319",
      "id": "BE.NMBS.008400319",
      "name": "'s Hertogenbosch",
      "locationX": "5.294278",
      "locationY": "51.69042",
      "standardname": "'s Hertogenbosch"
    }
  ]
}

Implementation Example

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

const url = "https://api.irail.be/stations/?format=json&lang=en";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://api.irail.be/stations/?format=json&lang=en"
headers = {}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl "https://api.irail.be/stations/?format=json&lang=en"

What Can You Build?

// Fetch transportation schedules
const response = await fetch(`https://docs.irail.be`);
const data = await response.json();
const routes = data.routes || data.schedules || data.departures || [];
const items = Array.isArray(routes) ? routes : [routes];
items.slice(0, 5).forEach(r => {
  console.log(`🚌 ${r.name || r.route}: ${r.departure || r.time || 'See schedule'}`);
});

// Plan a route between locations
const response = await fetch(`https://docs.irail.be`);
const data = await response.json();
const route = data.route || data.trip || data;
console.log('Distance:', route.distance || 'N/A');
console.log('Duration:', route.duration || route.travel_time || 'N/A');
console.log('Steps:', route.steps?.length || 'N/A');

// Fetch real-time transit information
const response = await fetch(`https://docs.irail.be`);
const data = await response.json();
const updates = data.departures || data.arrivals || data.vehicles || [];
const items = Array.isArray(updates) ? updates : [updates];
items.slice(0, 5).forEach(u => {
  console.log(`${u.line || u.route || 'Service'}: ${u.status || u.delay || 'On time'}`);
});

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.

{
  "exception": "NotFoundException",
  "message": "HTTP 404 Not Found",
  "at": "ServerRuntime.java:271",
  "stackTrace": []
}

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.