specification: API Commons Plans
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/Plans
provider: CMS Open Payments
providerId: open-payments
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Government Data
- Healthcare
- Open Data
- Transparency
- Free
- Plans
description: >-
  The CMS Open Payments data API is a free public good. It is operated by the
  U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and funded by the federal
  government, so there is no pricing, no metering, and no account required to read
  the data. Every endpoint - metastore catalog, search, datastore query, SQL, and
  CSV/JSON download - is available anonymously at no cost. The underlying records
  are U.S. government works in the public domain and may be reused, including
  commercially, subject to CMS data use guidance.
notes: >-
  There is no paid tier and no commercial plan. The only practical cost to a
  consumer is their own bandwidth and compute for pulling and processing large
  datasets (some single-year files contain tens of millions of rows). Verify
  current data use terms on cms.gov.
sources:
- https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/about/api
- https://www.cms.gov/priorities/key-initiatives/open-payments
- https://www.usa.gov/government-works
plans:
- id: open-payments-public
  name: Public Open Data (Free)
  type: free
  description: >-
    Unlimited free, anonymous read access to all Open Payments datasets and the
    full DKAN API surface. No API key, no registration, no charge.
  entries:
  - label: Public API Access
    name: public_api_access
    type: usage
    metric: requests
    limit: -1
    timeFrame: month
    geo: global
    unit: 1
    price: free (public domain U.S. government data)
    userMultiplied: false
  elements:
  - name: Metastore Catalog and Search
  - name: Datastore Structured Query
  - name: Datastore SQL Query
  - name: CSV and JSON Download
  - name: General, Research, and Ownership Datasets
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com