# iNaturalist

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/inaturalist/  
**Website:** https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/developers  
**APIs profiled:** 21

iNaturalist is a nature observation platform and citizen science network that connects people to nature through biodiversity observation and identification. The iNaturalist API provides programmatic access to over 200 million wildlife observations, species identifications, taxon data, and biodiversity records contributed by citizen scientists worldwide. The API supports reading and writing observations, taxa lookups, identifications, places, projects, and user data across v0, v1, and v2 endpoints.

## Kin Score — 43.3 / 100 (developing)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 43.3).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 74.1 |
| Contract Quality | 49.4 |
| Governance | 9.8 |
| Contract Governance | 9.8 |
| Operational Transparency | 26.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 38.1 |
| Commercial Clarity | 56.6 |
| Access Clarity | 56.6 |

## Agent readiness — 29.1 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Free · Self-serve signup — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: high).

## APIs (21)

- **iNaturalist API v2** — The next-generation iNaturalist API (v2) currently in development, designed to eventually replace v0 and v1 endpoints. Provides access to observation data with improved performa...
- **iNaturalist Annotations API** — Create, delete, and vote
- **iNaturalist Comments API** — Create, update, and delete
- **iNaturalist Controlled Terms API** — Search and fetch
- **iNaturalist Flags API** — Create, update, and delete flags
- **iNaturalist Identifications API** — Create, update, and delete
- **iNaturalist Messages API** — Create, fetch, delete
- **iNaturalist Observation Field Values API** — Create, update, and delete
- **iNaturalist Observation Photos API** — Create and delete
- **iNaturalist Observation Tiles API** — Map observation search results
- **iNaturalist Observations API** — CRUD, search, faving, quality metrics, stats, and more
- **iNaturalist Photos API** — The Photos API from iNaturalist — 1 operation(s) for photos.
- **iNaturalist Places API** — Search and fetch
- **iNaturalist Polygon Tiles API** — Place geometry and taxon range tiles
- **iNaturalist Posts API** — Fetch site and project posts
- **iNaturalist Project Observations API** — Create, update, and delete
- **iNaturalist Projects API** — Search and fetch projects and members
- **iNaturalist Search API** — Site search
- **iNaturalist Taxa API** — Search and fetch
- **iNaturalist Users API** — Fetch and update
- **iNaturalist UTFGrid API** — JSON for observation tiles

## Agentic access (1)

- **Inaturalist Agentic Access** — 105 operations · 51 acting

## Security (2)

- **Inaturalist Authentication** — apiKey · 1 scheme
- **Inaturalist Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC

## Plans (1)

- **Plans**

## Tags

Biodiversity, Nature, Citizen Science, Wildlife, Observations, Taxa, Ecology

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Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/inaturalist/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.