Who doesn’t like free things? The web provides data practically free. These 20 sources offer free data that are widely considered as reputable.
- Google Data Set Search
This helps you to search available datasets that have been marked up properly according to the schema.org standard. While this could be seen as a one-stop shop for datasets which includes data from NASA and ProPublica, there are many niche datasets that may be ideal for certain purposes.
You’ve shown results and each one is clickable to tell you:
- The name of the dataset
- When it was last updated
- A description
- Google Trends
With this tool, you can get information against keywords. You can get information on interest over time, interest by region, related topics, and related queries. You can also select options including which country (or worldwide) you want to see, narrow it down to categories, or confine your search to all of the web, images, news, shopping, or YouTube.
- The World Factbook
It contains information about 267 world entities. This is a treasure trove of data that is updated weekly with information about the world. You can select a country to view and then click on whatever topic you prefer. The site is also searchable.
- Altmetric
Though Altmetric offers some paid plans but they have a very useful set of top 100 most mentioned articles that have been published in a year.
- Open Corporates
It is the largest database of companies in the world. It gives you the access to information over 100 million organizations. You can search by companies or officers and limit your jurisdiction if you need to.
- National Center for Environmental Information
NCEI covers geophysical, atmospheric, and oceanic data. They are currently the world’s largest provider of climate and weather information.
- Data Sets SubReddit
Though you have to sign up but it’s free. You can search for datasets and find people giving information and requesting it. Reddit, in general, is also a great place to look for information and see what’s trending.
- Pew Internet
If you’re in search of sociological data, then Pew Internet is a great source.
There are some interesting articles that you can find by browsing around too. You do need to sign up to view and download datasets but it’s free.
- Group Lens
This has several available datasets that are useful for more niche projects. Some datasets are over a decade old. You can get a lot of information on books and films here.
- GitHub’s Buzzfeed News
This one gives you data from Buzzfeed. If you want information on a particular topic from 2016 to 2018, this one’s for you.
