Free country API: no key, no rate limit

How it compares

The obvious alternatives, checked on 5 August 2026. Each row states what that service itself documents; follow the links and verify before you commit to one.

Flagdex is not trying to be the richest country API. It is a static reference site that publishes the dataset it runs on. If you need cities, postal codes or IP geolocation, one of the others is the better fit.

Endpoints

All endpoints are plain JSON files served over HTTPS from https://flagdex.net. The versioned paths are the ones to build on.

All countries (full)

GET /api/v1/countries.json

Dataset metadata plus an array of every country with all fields.

All countries (lite)

GET /api/v1/countries-lite.json

A compact array with name, ISO codes, capital, region and flag. Small and fast, which is what an autocomplete or a dropdown needs.

A single country

GET /api/v1/country/{iso2}.json

One country by its lowercase ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, for example /api/v1/country/fr.json or /api/v1/country/jp.json.

Metadata

GET /api/v1/meta.json

Dataset vintage, the endpoint list, the licence and the stability policy.

Flags

GET /flags/{iso2}.svg
e.g. https://flagdex.net/flags/fr.svg

A public-domain SVG per country, with CORS open, so you can use it inside your own application and not only in an img tag.

OpenAPI

A machine-readable description lives at /openapi.json, so the API can be loaded into tooling or listed in a directory without anyone hand-writing a spec.

Versioning and stability

/api/v1/ is the stable namespace. Fields present in v1 are never removed or retyped within v1; new fields may be added. A breaking change would ship as /api/v2/ and the v1 paths would keep working. The unversioned paths (/api/countries.json and the rest) still work and will keep working, but pin to v1 for anything you care about.

The dataset is rebuilt periodically. The current vintage is 2026-07-02, and meta.json always states it. Responses carry a long Cache-Control, so cache them rather than refetching.

Example response

GET /api/v1/country/fr.json

{
  "iso2": "FR",
  "iso3": "FRA",
  "name": "France",
  "officialName": "French Republic",
  "capital": ["Paris"],
  "region": "Europe",
  "currencies": [{ "code": "EUR", "name": "Euro", "symbol": "\u20ac" }],
  "callingCodes": ["+33"],
  "flagEmoji": "\ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7",
  "population": 68720337
}

Quick start

const res = await fetch("https://flagdex.net/api/v1/country/br.json");
const brazil = await res.json();
console.log(brazil.capital[0]); // "Brasilia"

curl -s https://flagdex.net/api/v1/country/br.json | jq .capital

import requests

data = requests.get("https://flagdex.net/api/v1/countries-lite.json").json()
by_iso = {c["iso2"]: c for c in data}
print(by_iso["BR"]["capital"])

import { useEffect, useState } from "react";

export function CountrySelect({ value, onChange }) {
  const [countries, setCountries] = useState([]);
  useEffect(() => {
    fetch("https://flagdex.net/api/v1/countries-lite.json")
      .then((r) => r.json())
      .then((list) => setCountries(list.sort((a, b) => a.name.localeCompare(b.name))));
  }, []);

  return (
    <select value={value} onChange={(e) => onChange(e.target.value)}>
      {countries.map((c) => (
        <option key={c.iso2} value={c.iso2}>
          {c.flagEmoji} {c.name}
        </option>
      ))}
    </select>
  );
}

Common use cases

• A country dropdown with flags. countries-lite.json carries the emoji and the SVG path, so you need no icon library.
• A dialling-code selector. Read callingCodes from the full dataset and sort by country name.
• An ISO code validator. Build a set from iso2 and iso3 in the lite file and check against it offline.
• A currency dropdown. Take the distinct currencies[].code values from the full dataset.
• A quiz or geography game. The lite file plus /flags/{iso2}.svg is everything you need, and small enough to ship inside the app.

Licence and attribution

Base country data comes from the mledoze/countries dataset under the Open Database License 1.0. Population figures come from the World Bank under CC BY 4.0. The flag SVGs are public domain. Both licences permit commercial use and both require attribution, so here is a snippet you can paste as it stands:

<a href="https://flagdex.net">Country data from Flagdex</a> (ODbL 1.0, CC BY 4.0)

Country data from Flagdex (https://flagdex.net), ODbL 1.0 and CC BY 4.0.

Attribution is a condition of the underlying licences, not a favour to us. Full sources and vintage are on the data page.

Frequently asked questions

Who builds this

Flagdex is built and maintained by FusionStudios. We build fast, privacy-first web tools, with no ads and no tracking. If you need something similar, get in touch.