USGS Earthquake Scraper — Global Seismic Data, Magnitude, Depth & Alerts

Extract earthquake events worldwide from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) public API. Filter by time range, magnitude, and geographic bounding box. No API key or account required.

What does USGS Earthquake Scraper do?

This actor queries the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program's official FDSN Web Service (earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query) — a free, keyless REST endpoint that provides real-time and historical seismic data for the entire planet. You supply a time window and optional magnitude threshold; the actor fetches a GeoJSON FeatureCollection, parses every feature, and delivers structured rows to your Apify dataset.

Each earthquake record carries the full set of USGS properties: timestamp (millisecond-precision, converted to ISO 8601), human-readable location description, magnitude and magnitude type (ml, mb, mw, etc.), WGS-84 coordinates (longitude, latitude, depth in km), tsunami flag, community-sourced felt reports, PAGER alert level (green/yellow/orange/red), review status (automatic or reviewed), event type, and a direct link to the USGS detail page.

The API supports up to 20,000 events per request. For longer historical spans or lower magnitude thresholds that would exceed 20,000 events, simply split your query into shorter time windows and run the actor multiple times — all results can be merged in Google Sheets or any ETL tool.

Who is it for?

• Earth scientists and seismologists who need bulk seismic catalogs for statistical analysis, clustering algorithms, or recurrence-rate modeling.
• Emergency management professionals monitoring recent significant earthquakes (M 4.0+) across a region or globally for situational awareness dashboards.
• Data journalists and newsrooms building maps of major earthquakes for breaking-news stories or long-form earthquake risk investigations.
• Insurance and reinsurance analysts assessing seismic exposure, historical loss accumulation, and probabilistic hazard curves for a portfolio of locations.
• Researchers and academics building ML training datasets for earthquake early-warning systems, aftershock prediction models, or geo-hazard AI projects.

Use cases

• Global earthquake feed: Pull all M 2.5+ quakes from the past 30 days and refresh a public dashboard or newsletter automatically.
• Regional hazard analysis: Filter by bounding box (e.g. Japan, Turkey, California) to build a time-series of local seismicity for academic research.
• Tsunami risk monitoring: Filter tsunami=1 events to identify earthquakes that triggered tsunami watches or warnings over a historical period.
• Felt-report analysis: Collect events with high felt counts to understand public-impact patterns for urban resilience planning.
• Training data generation: Produce labeled datasets (magnitude, depth, location, alert level) for machine-learning earthquake classification tasks.

Why use USGS Earthquake Scraper?

• Completely keyless: The USGS FDSN endpoint is a public government data service — no signup, no API key, no credits, zero friction.
• 15 output fields per event: id, time, place, magnitude, magType, longitude, latitude, depth, tsunami, felt, alert, status, type, url, title — plus supplementary fields like cdi, mmi, sig, gap, rms, nst.
• Bulk extracts up to 20,000 events: One run can return a full month of global M 2.5+ activity (typically 8,000–15,000 events).
• Flexible filtering: Time range, min/max magnitude, and four-corner bounding box let you scope queries precisely.
• Two modes: query mode returns full event records; count mode returns only a metadata summary — useful for quick dashboards.
• Pay-per-result Apify pricing: You only pay for compute time; data is free from USGS.
• Export in any format: Apify dataset exports to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or JSONL in one click.

What data can you extract?

Each row in the output dataset represents one earthquake event. Here is the complete field reference:

Field	Type	Description
id	string	USGS event identifier (e.g. us7000mwak)
time	string	Event origin time in ISO 8601 UTC (ms precision)
updated	string	Last time USGS updated this event record
place	string	Human-readable location string (e.g. "42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska")
magnitude	number	Preferred magnitude value
magType	string	Magnitude scale (ml, mb, mw, mww, mwc, md, etc.)
longitude	number	WGS-84 longitude in decimal degrees
latitude	number	WGS-84 latitude in decimal degrees
depth	number	Hypocenter depth in kilometers
tsunami	number	1 if a tsunami message was issued, 0 otherwise
felt	number	Number of "Did You Feel It?" responses from the public
cdi	number	Maximum reported community-sourced intensity (DYFI)
mmi	number	Maximum estimated instrumental intensity (ShakeMap)
alert	string	PAGER alert level: green, yellow, orange, or red
status	string	automatic (machine-generated) or reviewed (human-verified)
type	string	Event type (earthquake, quarry blast, ice quake, etc.)
url	string	Direct USGS event page URL
title	string	Full event title (e.g. "M 5.1 - 42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska")
net	string	Contributing network code
code	string	Event code within the contributing network
sig	number	Significance score (0–1000) combining magnitude, PAGER, DYFI
nst	number	Number of seismic stations used to locate the earthquake
gap	number	Largest azimuthal gap between stations in degrees
rms	number	Root-mean-square travel-time residual in seconds
dmin	number	Horizontal distance from epicenter to nearest station in degrees

Example output record

{
  "id": "us7000mwak",
  "time": "2026-06-15T03:22:41.820Z",
  "updated": "2026-06-15T05:17:03.040Z",
  "place": "42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska",
  "magnitude": 5.1,
  "magType": "mww",
  "longitude": -135.1432,
  "latitude": 59.0871,
  "depth": 10.0,
  "tsunami": 0,
  "felt": 234,
  "cdi": 4.8,
  "mmi": 5.2,
  "alert": "green",
  "status": "reviewed",
  "type": "earthquake",
  "url": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000mwak",
  "title": "M 5.1 - 42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska",
  "net": "us",
  "code": "7000mwak",
  "sig": 400,
  "nst": 87,
  "gap": 34,
  "rms": 0.71,
  "dmin": 0.428
}

How to use

Option A — Query by time range and magnitude (most common)

Use this when you want all earthquakes globally or for a region during a specific period.

1. Open the actor and click Try for free.
2. Set Mode to query.
3. Set Start Time to your period start (e.g. 2026-01-01).
4. Set End Time to your period end (e.g. 2026-06-30).
5. Set Minimum Magnitude to your threshold (e.g. 4.0 for significant quakes, 2.5 for regional analysis).
6. Optionally set bounding box fields to restrict to a region.
7. Click Start and download results when the run completes.

Example input (global M 4.0+ in June 2026):

{
  "mode": "query",
  "startTime": "2026-06-01",
  "endTime": "2026-07-01",
  "minMagnitude": 4.0,
  "maxResults": 20000
}

Option B — Count mode (metadata only)

Use this when you just need to know how many earthquakes match your criteria before committing to a full extraction.

1. Set Mode to count.
2. Fill in the same time/magnitude/bbox filters.
3. The actor returns one row with a count field and USGS metadata.

Example input (count M 6.0+ globally, last year):

{
  "mode": "count",
  "startTime": "2025-07-01",
  "endTime": "2026-07-01",
  "minMagnitude": 6.0
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	query	query returns event records; count returns event count only
startTime	string	—	Start of time window (ISO 8601, e.g. 2026-06-01)
endTime	string	—	End of time window (ISO 8601). Defaults to current time if omitted
minMagnitude	number	2.5	Minimum magnitude threshold (0–10)
maxMagnitude	number	—	Maximum magnitude filter (optional)
maxResults	integer	20000	Hard cap on returned events (USGS API maximum is 20,000)
minLatitude	number	—	Bounding box south latitude (-90 to 90)
maxLatitude	number	—	Bounding box north latitude (-90 to 90)
minLongitude	number	—	Bounding box west longitude (-180 to 180)
maxLongitude	number	—	Bounding box east longitude (-180 to 180)
proxy	object	Datacenter	Apify proxy configuration. Datacenter is sufficient for USGS

Full example input JSON:

{
  "mode": "query",
  "startTime": "2026-06-01",
  "endTime": "2026-07-01",
  "minMagnitude": 4.0,
  "maxResults": 20000,
  "minLatitude": 30,
  "maxLatitude": 50,
  "minLongitude": 125,
  "maxLongitude": 145,
  "proxy": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["DATACENTER"]
  }
}

Output example

{
  "id": "us7000mwak",
  "time": "2026-06-15T03:22:41.820Z",
  "updated": "2026-06-15T05:17:03.040Z",
  "place": "42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska",
  "magnitude": 5.1,
  "magType": "mww",
  "longitude": -135.1432,
  "latitude": 59.0871,
  "depth": 10.0,
  "tsunami": 0,
  "felt": 234,
  "cdi": 4.8,
  "mmi": 5.2,
  "alert": "green",
  "status": "reviewed",
  "type": "earthquake",
  "url": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000mwak",
  "title": "M 5.1 - 42 km SSE of Haines, Alaska",
  "net": "us",
  "code": "7000mwak",
  "sig": 400,
  "nst": 87,
  "gap": 34,
  "rms": 0.71,
  "dmin": 0.428
}

Tips for best results

• Time range matters for volume: A 30-day window at M 2.5+ globally yields roughly 8,000–15,000 events. Use shorter windows for lower magnitude thresholds to stay under the 20,000 limit.
• Use M 4.0+ for "significant" global quakes: At this threshold, a full month returns 400–800 events — a manageable dataset for most analysis.
• Bounding box for regional studies: Use the four latitude/longitude fields to restrict output to a specific country or fault zone. Japan bbox: minLat 30, maxLat 47, minLon 129, maxLon 146.
• Count mode first: Before running a large query, use count mode to verify how many events will be returned — avoids surprises.
• Schedule recurring runs: Use Apify's built-in Scheduler to pull fresh data daily or weekly for monitoring dashboards.
• reviewed vs automatic status: Machine-processed events (automatic) may have slightly less accurate locations. Filter status=reviewed for scientific accuracy.
• Tsunami flag filtering: Post-process to tsunami === 1 to identify historically impactful events for coastal risk work.
• Combine with Google Sheets: Connect your dataset to Google Sheets via Apify integration for live earthquake tracking spreadsheets.
• Depth interpretation: Shallow quakes (depth < 70 km) generally cause more surface damage. Filter by depth for structural engineering analysis.
• Alert level for impact triage: PAGER alert green/yellow/orange/red maps to estimated fatality/economic thresholds — use it to quickly flag high-impact events.

Integrations

The actor output integrates with any tool that can read Apify datasets:

• Google Sheets: Use the Apify Google Sheets integration to automatically sync earthquake data into a spreadsheet.
• Slack: Send earthquake alerts to a Slack channel via Apify webhooks triggered on run completion.
• Zapier / Make: Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — pipe new earthquakes into Airtable, Notion, a custom database, or an email template.
• Webhooks: Configure a POST webhook in the actor settings to notify your own API endpoint when a run finishes.
• Scheduled runs: Use Apify Scheduler to run the actor every hour or day and keep a fresh time-series of seismic activity.

API usage

cURL:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~usgs-earthquake-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "startTime": "2026-06-01",
    "endTime": "2026-07-01",
    "minMagnitude": 4.0
  }'

Node.js (Apify client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('logiover/usgs-earthquake-scraper').call({
  startTime: '2026-06-01',
  endTime: '2026-07-01',
  minMagnitude: 4.0,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} earthquakes`);

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("logiover/usgs-earthquake-scraper").call(run_input={
    "startTime": "2026-06-01",
    "endTime": "2026-07-01",
    "minMagnitude": 4.0,
})

items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items
print(f"Got {len(items)} earthquakes")

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This actor is accessible via the Apify MCP server, allowing AI assistants like Claude to pull live USGS earthquake data on demand. Example prompt: "Use the USGS Earthquake Scraper to get all M 5.0+ earthquakes in Turkey in the last 90 days and summarize the seismic activity pattern." The actor will fetch, parse, and return structured data that the AI can immediately analyze, map, or summarize.

FAQ

Is this actor free to use?

The USGS data source is a free US government public API — no key or account required. You pay only for Apify compute time (typically a few cents per run).

What is the geographic coverage?

Global. USGS aggregates seismic data from networks worldwide, including ANSS (Advanced National Seismic System), EMSC, ISC, and regional networks. Coverage is densest in the US, Japan, and Europe but extends to every active seismic zone on Earth.

What is the maximum number of results per run?

The USGS FDSN API hard-caps responses at 20,000 events per query. For periods or magnitude thresholds that would produce more events, split into multiple shorter time windows and combine the datasets.

Why am I getting zero results?

Check your time range and magnitude threshold. A very narrow window (e.g. a single day) at M 5.0+ may produce 0–5 events globally. Lower minMagnitude to 2.5 or widen the time range. Also verify your bounding box coordinates are in the correct order (minLat < maxLat, minLon < maxLon).

Some fields are null — is that a problem?

Yes, some fields are optional in USGS data. felt, cdi, mmi, and alert are only populated for significant earthquakes that triggered PAGER reports or received DYFI responses. alert is null for the majority of small events — this is expected.

How current is the data?

USGS updates its feed in near-real-time, with new automatic detections typically appearing within 5–15 minutes of an event. Reviewed events are updated within hours to days depending on significance.

Can I filter by event type?

Not directly in the input, but you can post-filter by the type field in the output. Values include earthquake, quarry blast, explosion, ice quake, sonic boom, and more.

How do I export data to Excel or CSV?

From the run's dataset view in Apify Console, click the Export button and select your format (CSV, Excel, JSON, JSONL, XML). You can also use the Apify API to programmatically download datasets.

How fast does the actor run?

A single request to the USGS API returns up to 20,000 events in one HTTP call. Total run time is typically 30–90 seconds including build start-up, network fetch, and dataset push.

Is scraping USGS earthquake data legal?

The USGS is a US federal government agency. Its earthquake data is published under the U.S. Government Open Data policy — fully public domain, freely usable for commercial and non-commercial purposes without restriction.

How often should I run the actor for monitoring?

For real-time monitoring, schedule the actor every 1–6 hours with a rolling time window (e.g. last 24 hours at M 4.0+). For historical research, a one-time run per time period is sufficient.

Are there related actors for other geo-hazard data?

Yes — check out other data actors in the logiover collection on Apify Store. Related topics include weather data, NOAA datasets, and global news monitoring.

Is it legal?

This actor accesses data from earthquake.usgs.gov, an official US federal government website operated by the United States Geological Survey. All data published by USGS is in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105, which exempts US government works from copyright. The FDSN Web Service is explicitly designed for programmatic access by researchers, developers, and the public. This actor does not scrape a human-facing website — it calls an official documented REST API that the USGS provides specifically for automated data retrieval.

Related scrapers

• NOAA Weather Scraper — historical and real-time weather data from NOAA's public APIs.
• OpenStreetMap B2B Lead Scraper — extract business data from OSM by sector and geography.
• Common Vulnerabilities (CVE) Advisory Scraper — pull CVE/NVD security data without an API key.
• Certificate Transparency Monitor — track new TLS certificates by domain using crt.sh.