NESO Open Data Portal API

Use in your agent

Load the NESO dataset catalog into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 1, 2026.

Access

• No account or key for public CKAN action endpoints.
• This example retrieves catalog metadata; follow each resource URL to ingest a selected dataset.

Request

curl 'https://api.neso.energy/api/3/action/package_search?rows=100'

Format

CKAN JSON response containing total match count and dataset records with identifiers, titles, notes, tags, timestamps, licence labels and arrays of downloadable resources.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

"""NESO public dataset catalog metadata -> pandas -> Parquet."""
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://api.neso.energy/api/3/action/package_search"
response = requests.get(URL, params={"rows": 100}, timeout=60)
response.raise_for_status()
payload = response.json()["result"]
rows = []
for item in payload["results"]:
    rows.append({
        "name": item["name"],
        "title": item["title"],
        "metadata_created": item["metadata_created"],
        "metadata_modified": item["metadata_modified"],
        "license_title": item.get("license_title"),
        "resource_count": len(item.get("resources", [])),
    })
df = pd.DataFrame(rows)
df["metadata_created"] = pd.to_datetime(df["metadata_created"], utc=True)
df["metadata_modified"] = pd.to_datetime(df["metadata_modified"], utc=True)
df.to_parquet("neso_portal_catalog.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "datasets returned of", payload["count"], "matches;",
      int(df["resource_count"].sum()), "resources in returned metadata")

Run by us on 2026-11-01 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 100 datasets returned of 131 matches; 1040 resources in returned metadata

Limits

• CKAN API pacing: maximum one request per second is requested.
• Datastore API pacing: maximum two requests per minute is requested.
• package_search is paginated; use rows and start to traverse more than the returned page.

Quirks

• CKAN calls datasets packages and data files resources; portal labels use different terms.
• A dataset can contain many resources with different formats, periods and update times.
• The NESO licence applies only when the dataset explicitly associates itself with that licence.

Terms and attribution

• The NESO licence permits commercial and non-commercial reuse of associated datasets.
• Associated data must carry the statement Supported by National Energy SO Open Data.

Sources

• https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/api-guidance: “It is recommended to limit requests to a maximum one request per second”
• https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/neso-open-licence: “The Licensor grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below.”
• https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/neso-open-licence: “Supported by National Energy SO Open Data”
• https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/neso-open-licence: “each dataset on the NESO data portal is licenced on an individual basis”