Ensembl REST API

The Ensembl REST API (v15.12) provides language-agnostic HTTP access to genome annotation data across hundreds of vertebrate and eukaryotic species. It exposes 19 endpoint categories covering genome sequences, gene and transcript lookups, variant effect prediction (VEP), comparative genomics (gene trees, homology, alignments), coordinate mapping between assemblies, regulatory features, linkage disequilibrium, ontology and taxonomy queries, phenotype annotations, and GA4GH-compliant genomic data access. Both GET and POST methods are available; POST endpoints support batch operations for multiple identifiers. No authentication is required for public use.

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API entry from apis.yml

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: ensembl:rest-api
name: Ensembl REST API
description: The Ensembl REST API (v15.12) provides language-agnostic HTTP access to genome annotation
  data across hundreds of vertebrate and eukaryotic species. It exposes 19 endpoint categories covering
  genome sequences, gene and transcript lookups, variant effect prediction (VEP), comparative genomics
  (gene trees, homology, alignments), coordinate mapping between assemblies, regulatory features, linkage
  disequilibrium, ontology and taxonomy queries, phenotype annotations, and GA4GH-compliant genomic data
  access. Both GET and POST methods are available; POST endpoints support batch operations for multiple
  identifiers. No authentication is required for public use.
humanURL: https://rest.ensembl.org
baseURL: https://rest.ensembl.org
tags:
- Genomics
- Gene Annotation
- Variant Effect Prediction
- Comparative Genomics
- Sequence Retrieval
- VEP
- GA4GH
properties:
- type: Documentation
  url: https://rest.ensembl.org/documentation
- type: Website
  url: https://rest.ensembl.org
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl-rest/wiki/Change-Log
- type: RateLimits
  url: https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl-rest/wiki/Rate-Limits
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/Ensembl/ensembl-rest
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/ensembl-rest-api.json