The National University of Singapore is Singapore's flagship public research university, ranked eighth in the QS World University Rankings 2025, and it is a near-perfect illustration of why a university is a federation of buyers rather than a producer. NUS operates exactly one substantial machine-readable API surface of its own: the federated identity service at vafs.nus.edu.sg, which publishes a live OpenID Connect discovery document, a JWKS, and signed SAML 2.0 metadata for entityID https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/services/trust, and which registers NUS as an identity provider in the Singapore Access Federation. Everything else that looks like an NUS API belongs to a platform NUS rents — ScholarBank@NUS is Atmire's DSpace, the learning management system is Instructure's Canvas, the blogs are CampusPress, the library guides are Springshare. NUS has an API gateway hostname at api.nus.edu.sg on a certificate issued to the university, and it returns HTTP 500 on every path. The campus shuttle bus API at nnextbus.nus.edu.sg is genuinely NUS's and genuinely live, but sits behind HTTP Basic credentials the university does not issue publicly. Most strikingly, NUS's own course vocabulary — modules, modular credits, prerequisite trees — has no public machine-readable expression from the university at all; the only OpenAPI describing NUS course data is published by NUSMods, a student organisation, from a non-NUS domain. There is no NUS developer portal, no institution-wide GitHub organisation, no public open-data portal, no llms.txt, and no self-service registration path to any NUS API.
National University of Singapore publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network: NUS Federated Identity Service (VAFS). Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, Singapore, and Research.
The National University of Singapore catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.
National University of Singapore’s developer surface includes engineering blog, code examples, authentication, and 26 more developer resources.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Education & Research regime, so
Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite.
If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your
provider repo — the
applicability map is public and we will correct it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
The National University of Singapore's own identity provider, and the only substantial machine-readable API surface the institution operates itself. Publishes an OpenID Connect ...
The API behind the NUS internal shuttle bus service — bus stops, services and arrival times across the Kent Ridge and Bukit Timah campuses. Institution-operated and live, but ga...
The HAL-style REST API of ScholarBank@NUS, the university's institutional repository — communities, collections, items, bitstreams and a 485-field metadata registry covering the...
OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for ScholarBank@NUS, advertising twelve metadata formats including oai_dc, qdc, mods, mets, marc, etdms and uketd_dc, with an earliest d...
The learning management system for NUS courses, running on Instructure's Canvas as a vanity tenant. The REST API is live and returns a structured 401 to unauthenticated callers;...
The NUS academic, educational, research and administrative blogging platform exposes a full WordPress REST API with eleven namespaces and 190 routes, anonymously readable. Runs ...
The only public machine-readable description of NUS course data that exists — module lists, module information, prerequisite trees, timetables and venue occupancy, published as ...
NUS is one of fourteen identity providers registered in the Singapore Access Federation, which SingAREN operates and which interfederates with eduGAIN. The entityID NUS is regis...
aid: nus
name: National University of Singapore
description: 'The National University of Singapore is Singapore''s flagship public research university, ranked eighth in the
QS World University Rankings 2025, and it is a near-perfect illustration of why a university is a federation of buyers rather
than a producer. NUS operates exactly one substantial machine-readable API surface of its own: the federated identity service
at vafs.nus.edu.sg, which publishes a live OpenID Connect discovery document, a JWKS, and signed SAML 2.0 metadata for entityID
https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/services/trust, and which registers NUS as an identity provider in the Singapore Access Federation.
Everything else that looks like an NUS API belongs to a platform NUS rents — ScholarBank@NUS is Atmire''s DSpace, the learning
management system is Instructure''s Canvas, the blogs are CampusPress, the library guides are Springshare. NUS has an API
gateway hostname at api.nus.edu.sg on a certificate issued to the university, and it returns HTTP 500 on every path. The
campus shuttle bus API at nnextbus.nus.edu.sg is genuinely NUS''s and genuinely live, but sits behind HTTP Basic credentials
the university does not issue publicly. Most strikingly, NUS''s own course vocabulary — modules, modular credits, prerequisite
trees — has no public machine-readable expression from the university at all; the only OpenAPI describing NUS course data
is published by NUSMods, a student organisation, from a non-NUS domain. There is no NUS developer portal, no institution-wide
GitHub organisation, no public open-data portal, no llms.txt, and no self-service registration path to any NUS API.'
type: Index
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: none
trial: false
try_now: false
public: false
label: Affiliation-gated
confidence: high
source:
- plans
- authentication
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/nus.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/nus/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Singapore
- Research
- Identity Federation
- Research Repository
- Course Catalog
- Open Access
- Learning Management
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
apis:
- aid: nus:identity
name: NUS Federated Identity Service (VAFS)
description: The National University of Singapore's own identity provider, and the only substantial machine-readable API
surface the institution operates itself. Publishes an OpenID Connect discovery document, a JSON Web Key Set, and signed
SAML 2.0 / WS-Federation metadata, all anonymously readable. Fronts OAuth 2.0 authorization, token, userinfo, device-code
and logout endpoints. Relying parties are registered by NUS Information Technology; there is no public client registration
and no self-service path.
humanURL: https://nusit.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs
tags:
- Identity Federation
- Authentication
- OpenID Connect
- SAML
- Single Sign-On
tags_raw:
- Identity Federation
- Authentication
- OpenID Connect
- OAuth
- SAML
- Single Sign-On
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/nus-identity-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/.well-known/openid-configuration
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/nus-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/nus-scopes.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/nus-openid-configuration-schema.json
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: TLS certificate subject O=National University of Singapore (DigiCert EV); A record 137.132.21.18 in
NUS address space; SAML entityID under nus.edu.sg.
- aid: nus:nextbus
name: NUS NextBus (Internal Shuttle Bus) API
description: The API behind the NUS internal shuttle bus service — bus stops, services and arrival times across the Kent
Ridge and Bukit Timah campuses. Institution-operated and live, but gated behind HTTP Basic credentials that NUS does not
issue to the public, so no schema, response shape or operation list could be observed. Recorded because a campus transit
API is one of the few genuinely institution-run surface classes a university has, and this one is real.
humanURL: https://nusit.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://nnextbus.nus.edu.sg/
tags:
- Campus Life
- Transit
- Shuttle Bus
- Gated
properties:
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/nus-authentication.yml
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: TLS certificate subject O=National University of Singapore (Sectigo OV); A record 137.132.173.15 in
NUS address space.
x-access: gated
x-status: 401 Unauthorized, WWW-Authenticate Basic (probed 2026-08-19)
- aid: nus:scholarbank-rest
name: ScholarBank@NUS DSpace REST API
description: The HAL-style REST API of ScholarBank@NUS, the university's institutional repository — communities, collections,
items, bitstreams and a 485-field metadata registry covering the university's scholarly output, theses and research data.
The content, the Handle prefix 10635 and the administrative contact scholarbank@nus.edu.sg are NUS's; the DSpace 7.6 software
and the hosting are Atmire Open Repository's. The contract is the vendor's and is deliberately not saved under this institution.
humanURL: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/server/api
tags:
- Research Repository
- Open Access
- DSpace
- Scholarly
- Metadata
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/server/api
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: scholarbank.nus.edu.sg CNAMEs to nusor.cname.openrepository.com (Atmire Open Repository).
- aid: nus:scholarbank-oai
name: ScholarBank@NUS OAI-PMH Interface
description: 'OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for ScholarBank@NUS, advertising twelve metadata formats including
oai_dc, qdc, mods, mets, marc, etdms and uketd_dc, with an earliest datestamp of 2006-11-09. The interface is conformant
apart from one live defect: the Identify response returns an unsubstituted configuration template as its repositoryIdentifier.'
humanURL: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/oai/request
tags:
- Research Repository
- OAI-PMH
- Metadata
- Harvesting
- Open Access
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/nus-conformance.yml
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: Same host as the DSpace REST API; Atmire Open Repository hosted.
- aid: nus:canvas
name: NUS Canvas LMS API
description: The learning management system for NUS courses, running on Instructure's Canvas as a vanity tenant. The REST
API is live and returns a structured 401 to unauthenticated callers; the LTI 1.3 tool-platform JWKS is publicly readable.
NUS's courses and students, Instructure's contract and engineering.
humanURL: https://canvas.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://canvas.nus.edu.sg/api/v1
tags:
- Learning Management
- LTI
- Course Delivery
- Gated
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://canvas.nus.edu.sg/api/lti/security/jwks
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: canvas.nus.edu.sg CNAMEs to nus-vanity.instructure.com; TLS certificate carries no organization.
- aid: nus:blog-wp
name: Blog.nus WordPress REST API
description: The NUS academic, educational, research and administrative blogging platform exposes a full WordPress REST
API with eleven namespaces and 190 routes, anonymously readable. Runs on CampusPress managed WordPress; the contract is
WordPress core's and applies identically to every CampusPress customer.
humanURL: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/
baseURL: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/wp-json
tags:
- Publishing
- Content
- WordPress
- Blog
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/wp-json/
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: blog.nus.edu.sg CNAMEs to c1141.campuspress.com; Let's Encrypt DV certificate with no organization.
- aid: nus:nusmods
name: NUSMods API (student-operated, not endorsed)
description: The only public machine-readable description of NUS course data that exists — module lists, module information,
prerequisite trees, timetables and venue occupancy, published as an OpenAPI 3.0.1 document with academic-year path versioning.
It is built and run by NUSModifications, a student organisation, on nusmods.com, and its own specification names mods@nusmods.com
as the contact. Its description states the data is scraped daily from official APIs provided by the NUS Registrar's Office
— meaning NUS does operate a course API, but not one the public can reach. No evidence of institutional endorsement or
operation was found, so this is recorded as a relationship and its artifacts are deliberately not saved under NUS.
humanURL: https://nusmods.com/
baseURL: https://api.nusmods.com/v2
tags:
- Course Catalog
- Timetable
- Student Built
- Open-Source
tags_raw:
- Course Catalog
- Timetable
- Student Built
- Open Source
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://api.nusmods.com/v2/
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/nusmodifications
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: servers[] api.nusmods.com (non-NUS registrable domain); info.contact.email mods@nusmods.com; operated
by the NUSModifications student organisation under MIT licence.
x-endorsement: none_found
- aid: nus:sgaf
name: NUS entry in the Singapore Access Federation
description: NUS is one of fourteen identity providers registered in the Singapore Access Federation, which SingAREN operates
and which interfederates with eduGAIN. The entityID NUS is registered under is a SimpleSAMLphp proxy on singaren.net.sg,
so the federation entry itself is operated by SingAREN on the university's behalf. A real institutional fact; not NUS's
engineering.
humanURL: https://www.singaren.net.sg/network-services/singapore-access-federation-sgaf/
baseURL: https://nusaz.singaren.net.sg/simplesaml/saml2/idp/metadata.php
tags:
- Identity Federation
- SAML
- eduGAIN
- Research Network
properties:
- type: IdentityFederation
url: identity-federation/nus-identity-federation.yml
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: entityID hosted on singaren.net.sg, operated by SingAREN, not by NUS.
common:
- type: Website
url: https://nus.edu.sg/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://nusmods.com/
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://libguides.nus.edu.sg/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://libguides.nus.edu.sg/new2nus/acadintegrity
- type: AITooling
url: https://news.nus.edu.sg/nus-makes-ai-courses-compulsory-gives-free-access-to-chatgpt-edu/
- type: Blog
url: https://news.nus.edu.sg/
- type: BlogRSS
url: https://news.nus.edu.sg/feed/
- type: SingleSignOn
url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/ls/
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/national-university-of-singapore/
- type: Twitter
url: https://twitter.com/NUSingapore
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/nus-identity-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/nus-openid-configuration-schema.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/index.yml
- type: Rules
url: rules/nus-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/nus-vocabulary.yml
- type: JSONLD
url: json-ld/nus-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/nus-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/nus-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/nus-errors.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/nus-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/nus-lifecycle.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
url: agentic-access/nus-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/nus-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/nus-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/nus-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/nus-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
x-coverage:
state: gated
reason: no_public_developer_program
detail: NUS operates real institution-owned API surfaces, but none of them can be consumed by an unaffiliated caller. The
federated identity service at vafs.nus.edu.sg publishes anonymously readable OIDC and SAML metadata, yet a client_id exists
only if NUS Information Technology creates one and there is no public or dynamic registration endpoint. The NUS shuttle
bus API at nnextbus.nus.edu.sg answers 401 with an HTTP Basic challenge and NUS issues no public credentials for it. The
api.nus.edu.sg gateway is live on an NUS-issued certificate and returns HTTP 500 on every probed path, publishing no route
at all. Two secondary limits apply and are recorded rather than treated as findings about NUS - the main nus.edu.sg web
estate sits behind an Imperva bot challenge that returns 200 with a JavaScript shell for every deep path, so terms-of-use,
IT and library pages could not be read and are not claimed as pointers; and nusit.nus.edu.sg answered 403 to the HPC documentation
path. Everything else that is publicly readable belongs to a platform NUS rents. This is a correct thin profile, not a
failed probe - 40+ URLs were fetched successfully across nine hosts.
evidence:
- url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/.well-known/openid-configuration
status: 200
- url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml
status: 200
- url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/adfs/discovery/keys
status: 200
- url: https://nnextbus.nus.edu.sg/BusStops
status: 401
- url: https://api.nus.edu.sg/
status: 500
- url: https://api.nus.edu.sg/swagger.json
status: 500
- url: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/server/api
status: 200
- url: https://canvas.nus.edu.sg/api/v1/accounts
status: 401
- url: https://canvas.nus.edu.sg/api/lti/security/jwks
status: 200
- url: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/wp-json/
status: 200
- url: https://vafs.nus.edu.sg/scim/v2/ServiceProviderConfig
status: 404
- url: https://nus.edu.sg/llms.txt
status: 200
note: soft-404 - HTML body, not an llms.txt; not credited
- url: https://www.nus.edu.sg/robots.txt
status: 200
note: soft-404 - HTML body behind Imperva; not credited
- url: https://nus.edu.sg/about-nus/terms-of-use
status: 200
note: Imperva JavaScript challenge shell, content unreadable; not claimed as a pointer
- url: https://nusit.nus.edu.sg/hpc/
status: 403
note: bot-challenged; research computing documentation not readable
- url: https://luminus.nus.edu.sg/
status: 0
note: decommissioned in-house LMS; DNS and NUS certificate remain, host does not connect
assessed: '2026-08-19'
method: university pipeline live probe sweep
removed: 2
removed_detail: Two NUSMods request collections (modules, venues) were removed from this repository. They describe the NUSModifications
student organisation's API, not the university's, and crediting them to NUS was the same artifact-presence-is-not-provenance
error the university pipeline exists to prevent. The relationship is retained as the nus:nusmods entry above.
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