Earthquake Data API - USGS Live Feed, Magnitude and Depth

For threshold alerting near a location, maps and dashboards, risk and insurance modelling, research, and feeding an AI agent authoritative seismic data: worldwide earthquakes straight from the US Geological Survey's own API — magnitude, depth, location, tsunami flag, felt reports and USGS's own significance score, as flat rows.

It never hands you an empty dataset by default. Run it with no input at all and you get the last 7 days at magnitude 2.5 and above — 451 earthquakes when measured on 2026-08-25 — because quakes that size happen worldwide every day. Up to 20,000 events per run, the USGS ceiling.

Two things the raw feed gets wrong are fixed before the row reaches you. USGS returns 1787587104573 (Unix milliseconds); every row here carries 2026-08-24T15:58:24.573Z instead, so a spreadsheet, a database and a chart all understand it with no conversion step. And GeoJSON stores coordinates as [longitude, latitude, depth] — longitude first, which puts earthquakes on the wrong side of the planet when read in order. Here they arrive as named latitude, longitude and depthKm fields.

USGS data is a work of the US government: public domain, no API key, no proxies, no terms that forbid redistribution. Nothing here parses HTML, so nothing here breaks when a website is redesigned. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Three things this does that the raw feed does not

1. Readable timestamps. USGS returns 1787587104573 — Unix milliseconds. Every row here carries 2026-08-24T15:58:24.573Z instead, so your spreadsheet, database and charts understand it without a conversion step.

2. Latitude and longitude in the fields you expect. GeoJSON stores coordinates as [longitude, latitude, depth] — longitude first. That order catches people out and puts earthquakes on the wrong side of the planet. Here they arrive as named latitude, longitude and depthKm fields.

3. Real booleans. The tsunami flag comes back as 0 / 1 from USGS. Here it is true / false — and stays null when USGS gave no value, rather than silently becoming false.

What you get

Field	Example
id	us6000tn4t
time / updated	2026-08-24T15:58:24.573Z
magnitude / magnitudeType	2.6 / mb_lg
place	11 km ENE of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana
latitude / longitude / depthKm	31.8417 / -93.3902 / 7.364
tsunami	false
feltReports	2 — how many people reported feeling it
alertLevel	green / yellow / orange / red, or null
significance	105 — USGS's own importance score
status	reviewed / automatic
url	The USGS event page

One real row, exactly as written

{
  "id": "us6000tn4t",
  "time": "2026-08-24T15:58:24.573Z",
  "updated": "2026-08-24T16:22:17.322Z",
  "magnitude": 2.6,
  "magnitudeType": "mb_lg",
  "place": "11 km ENE of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana",
  "latitude": 31.8417,
  "longitude": -93.3902,
  "depthKm": 7.364,
  "tsunami": false,
  "feltReports": 2,
  "alertLevel": null,
  "significance": 105,
  "status": "reviewed",
  "network": "us",
  "url": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000tn4t",
  "source": "USGS earthquake.usgs.gov (official, public domain)"
}

Input

Everything is optional. Run it with no input and you get the last 7 days at magnitude 2.5 and above — 451 earthquakes when measured on 2026-08-25, because quakes that size happen worldwide every day. The default never returns an empty dataset.

{
  "daysBack": 7,
  "minMagnitude": 4.5,
  "latitude": 35.6,
  "longitude": 139.7,
  "radiusKm": 500,
  "orderBy": "magnitude"
}

Field	Default	Meaning
daysBack	7	How far back, when no explicit start date is given
startTime / endTime	empty	Explicit YYYY-MM-DD range. Overrides daysBack
minMagnitude	2.5	Only quakes at or above this magnitude
latitude / longitude / radiusKm	none	Area filter. All three are required together — the Actor tells you in the log if you set only some, instead of failing with an unexplained error
limit	1000	Up to 20,000 per run (the USGS ceiling)
orderBy	time	time = newest first, magnitude = strongest first
maxRetries	3	Retries if USGS returns an error or something that is not JSON

Typical uses

• Monitoring and alerting when a quake crosses a magnitude threshold near a location
• Maps, dashboards and news tickers
• Historical analysis and research
• Risk and insurance modelling
• Feeding an AI agent that needs authoritative seismic data

FAQ

Does it cover the whole world? Yes. USGS publishes global seismicity, not just the United States.

How current is it? Fetched live on every run. USGS updates continuously; status tells you whether a record is automatic (machine-detected) or reviewed (checked by a seismologist).

Do I need an API key? No. Neither for USGS nor for a proxy.

What if no earthquakes match? You get zero rows and a clear log line saying the fetch succeeded but nothing matched — not an error, and not a silent blank.

Can I search a specific city? Pass its latitude, longitude and a radiusKm. All three together.

Other tools by NeverEmpty

Every NeverEmpty Actor follows the same rule: it never returns an empty result to mean two different things, and it only charges for rows that actually carry an answer.

• us-weather-forecast-api - US forecasts from the official National Weather Service API
• sports-scores-api - scores for 8 leagues in one identical row shape

Support

Wrong value or a filter that should work but does not? Open an issue on the Issues tab.