Censys Platform API

Use in your agent

Load a Censys host lookup into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 1, 2026.

Access

• Create a free Censys account and Personal Access Token; store it in CENSYS_PAT.
• The Free tier supports host, web property and certificate lookup endpoints, not search.

Request

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $CENSYS_PAT" -H 'Accept: application/vnd.censys.api.v3.host.v1+json' 'https://api.platform.censys.io/v3/global/asset/host/8.8.8.8'

Format

JSON host resource containing IP, location, autonomous-system, WHOIS and observed service objects; available fields depend on the account tier.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

"""Censys Free host lookup -> pandas -> Parquet. Requires CENSYS_PAT."""
import os
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://api.platform.censys.io/v3/global/asset/host/8.8.8.8"
headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['CENSYS_PAT']}",
    "Accept": "application/vnd.censys.api.v3.host.v1+json",
}
r = requests.get(URL, headers=headers, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
resource = r.json()["result"]["resource"]
df = pd.json_normalize([resource], sep=".")
df.to_parquet("censys_host_8_8_8_8.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "host", df.loc[0, "ip"], "columns", len(df.columns))

Not run: it needs a free API key.

Limits

• Free users receive 100 credits per month and five free Platform API or UI actions per day.
• The Free API tier provides asset lookup endpoints only and allows one concurrent action.
• Account-specific request limits are displayed on the Personal Access Tokens page.

Quirks

• The current Platform API uses a bearer Personal Access Token, not the legacy API ID and secret authentication.
• Free users cannot use the search endpoint even though search examples appear elsewhere in the API reference.
• Service scan_time is an observation timestamp; a missing service is not proof that it is closed.

Terms and attribution

• Free-tier data is non-commercial and requires Censys attribution with a link.
• Do not redistribute Censys data as a stand-alone database or embed it in a third-party product without the required enterprise rights.

Sources

• https://docs.censys.com/reference/get-started.md: “Censys Free users only have access to host, web property, and certificate lookup (get a host, retrieve multiple hosts, get a certificate, retrieve multiple certificates, get a web property, and retrieve multiple web properties) endpoints.”
• https://docs.censys.com/docs/platform-credits-free-starter.md: “Every Censys Free user receives 100 credits per month at no cost.”
• https://docs.censys.com/docs/internet-scanning.md: “Every day, the age of each of the over 3 billion services in our data set is checked.”
• https://censys.com/terms-of-service/: “Non-paying Customers must cite the Service and link to the Site wherever Censys Data is used”