API Documentation

Free, public REST API for recession sentiment data. No API key required.

Base URL: https://api.rwindex.app
Rate limit: 60 requests per minute per IP address.
Authentication: None required for read endpoints below.

Endpoints

GET/api/index/current

Returns today's index value, state label, interpretation text, and the AI-scored variant.

curl

JavaScript

Python

Sample response

GET/api/index/history

Returns historical index data as a time series. Use the range parameter to control how far back to look.

Parameter	Type	Description
`range`	string	Time range: 30d, 90d, 1y, or all. Defaults to 30d.

curl

JavaScript

Python

Sample response

GET/api/methodology

Returns a text summary of how the index is calculated — data sources, scoring formula, and aggregation method.

curl

JavaScript

Python

Sample response

GET/api/insights/latest

Returns the most recent AI-generated analysis of recession sentiment. The analysis covers the previous day's data.

Parameter	Type	Description
`locale`	string	Language code: en, ru, ar, es, zh-Hans, or pt-BR. Defaults to en.

curl

JavaScript

Python

Sample response

GET/api/insights/by-date/{date}

Returns the AI analysis for a specific historical date. Used by the /daily archive pages.

Parameter	Type	Description
`date`	string (path)	Date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
`locale`	string	Language code: en, ru, ar, es, zh-Hans, or pt-BR. Defaults to en.

curl

JavaScript

Python

Sample response

Notes

All endpoints return JSON. Dates are in YYYY-MM-DD format.
The llm_index and llm_state fields are the AI-scored variants displayed on the public website. The plain index and state fields are the keyword-based baseline.
New data is published daily at approximately 08:00 MSK (05:00 UTC). If you request /insights/latest before that time, you may receive a 503 DATA_NOT_READY response.
Generating new insights requires authentication and is not available publicly.

Attribution

The API is free to use. If you build something with it — a dashboard, a bot, a newsletter — please link back to rwindex.app and credit the R-Word Index. We are a small project and every backlink helps.

Questions or Issues?

Open an issue on GitHub.