In preview — full access, free

Argue about what it means.
Not about what it is.

The government's own records — 490+ datasets from 40+ federal agencies — cross-linked by entity, geography, and time since 2010, vintages reconciled, every field normalized, one query away. Ask Claude to run the numbers and show its work, or run the statistics yourself from Python or SQL. Every answer traces back to a primary source.

MCP-compatible client · AskAmerica
You
If I had one more dollar to spend on teachers, should I
raise pay or hire more of them?
Claude
That's a measurable tradeoff. At the same per-pupil spending, some states choose fewer, better-paid teachers — others choose more of them. So: hold total spending constant, put salaries in real dollars, control for child poverty, and compare the two groups on NAEP scores. SELECT state, real_salary, pupil_teacher_ratio, score FROM ... -- NCES staffing × NAEP × Census ACS, -- joined by state and year The record has an answer. Run it and see for yourself.
pip install 'askamerica[engine]'
Also works from Python, Node, Java, DBeaver

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics." The fix for the third one is showing the work — every answer here ships with its SQL and its primary source.


It won't settle the debate.
It will raise the floor.

Crime, healthcare costs, inflation — the big questions come with competing explanations, each backed by somebody's cherry-picked chart, and the data alone won't crown a winner. What it can do is pin down the checkable part — what happened, where, when, to whom — so the argument moves to the part that's genuinely hard. Framed well, a surprising number of questions have answers sitting in the record. Claude runs the numbers while you watch.

🚔
Concerned about crime?
Is it immigration? Education? Unemployment? Police staffing? Public investment? Join FBI incident data with Census demographics, BLS employment, school statistics, and federal spending — by county, by year — and see what the record supports and what it doesn't.
crime + census + econ + edu + fiscal
🏥
Concerned about healthcare costs?
Is it drug prices? Hospital consolidation? Administrative overhead? Chronic disease? Cross-reference CMS payment data, FDA drug approvals, medical CPI, and hospital financials from SEC filings.
health + econ + sec
💸
Concerned about inflation?
Is it the money supply? Deficits? Supply chains? Corporate margins? Energy? Line up Federal Reserve M2, Treasury issuance, import flows, XBRL profit margins, and energy prices against CPI — month by month.
econ + energy + sec + fiscal
🏘️
Concerned about housing?
Is it zoning and supply? Interest rates? Investor buyers? Migration? Compare building permits, FHFA price indexes, HMDA mortgage records, and county-to-county migration flows for your own market.
housing + econ + census + fiscal
🎓
Concerned about schools?
Is it funding? Class size? Poverty? Choice? Join NAEP outcomes with per-pupil spending, district statistics, and Census poverty rates — and see how much of the variation each factor actually accounts for.
edu + census + fiscal
🌀
Concerned about disaster costs?
Is it climate? Coastal development? Insurance markets? Connect FEMA declarations and paid claims, NOAA storm events, flood-insurance policies, and building permits — back to 2010, county by county.
disasters + weather + housing
🏛️
Concerned about public corruption?
Is it campaign money? No-bid contracts? The revolving door? Earmarks? Trace contributions to committees to contract awards — donor, recipient, agency, and dollar amount, entity-resolved across FEC filings, federal spending, and the officials who voted.
fec + fiscal + officials + sec

Civic mission.
Professional grade.

Provenance, reproducibility, entities and geographies that actually join — the properties professionals bill hours against, wherever the work has to be data-driven. One key, pay only for bytes scanned, first GB every month free.

📰
Covering a story on deadline?
Get the number, the SQL that produced it, and a citation to the primary source — before your editor asks. Campaign finance, disaster declarations, federal rules, agency spending: queryable in plain English, defensible in print.
reporters & newsrooms
🎓
Publishing a paper?
Your methods section is the SQL — fully reproducible by any reviewer with a free key. Panel regressions, difference-in-differences, and survey-weighted statistics run server-side against consistent vintages.
academic & policy researchers
🌊
Underwriting a county?
FEMA paid claims, NFIP flood policies, NOAA storm events, drought history, and building permits — joined by county FIPS, back to 2010. Loss history and exposure trends in one query instead of five portals.
insurance underwriters
📈
Modeling a sector?
XBRL fundamentals, insider transactions, patents, FDA approvals, federal contracts, and Federal Register rulemaking — entity-resolved across agencies via CIK, LEI, and ticker, with text similarity search over filings.
equity research & buy side

490+ datasets.
40 agencies. One key.

Updated daily from primary government sources, with history back to 2010. All schemas cross-linked by legal entity, geography, and time. No API keys per dataset — one AskAmerica key accesses everything. Browse the full schema, table & column catalog →

🏦
SEC Filings & Market Data
16 datasets — 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K filings, XBRL financials, insider transactions, institutional holdings, company facts, and end-of-day stock prices for all EDGAR filers. Includes text similarity search across footnotes and MD&A sections. Updated daily.
sec.*
🗳️
FEC Campaign Finance
14 datasets — every contribution, expenditure, and independent expenditure reported to the FEC. Candidates, committees, PACs, and super PACs.
fec.*
🌦️
NOAA Weather
12 datasets — daily observations from 100,000+ stations (GHCND), NWS stations and alerts, drought monitor, wildfire smoke, and climate normals. Since 2010.
weather.*
📊
Census Bureau
48 datasets — ACS 5-year estimates, decennial census, population estimates, business dynamics, county business patterns, and commuter flows at every geography.
census.*
📈
Economic Indicators
64 datasets — BLS jobs and CPI, BEA GDP and PCE, Federal Reserve rates and M2, Treasury yields, Census trade flows, plus UN Comtrade, ILOSTAT, and World Bank WDI international indicators. Monthly and quarterly.
econ.*
🔵
Federal Register
Every federal rule, proposed rule, and notice — full text, agency metadata, CFR citations, and comment periods. Supports text similarity search across the full document corpus. Updated daily.
fedregister.*
🔒
Cyber Vulnerabilities
14 datasets — NIST NVD CVE records, CVSS scores, CPE matches, OSV open-source advisories, and CISA remediation deadlines. Updated daily.
cyber_vuln.*
⚠️
Cyber Threat Intelligence
12 datasets — MITRE ATT&CK techniques and groups, CISA known exploited vulnerabilities, IOC feeds, and NIST/CIS security controls.
cyber_threat.*
EIA Energy
18 datasets — electricity generation and retail sales, natural gas, petroleum, coal, and renewables by state and fuel type. Includes MSHA mine safety data.
energy.*
🏥
Health (FDA / CDC / CMS)
33 datasets — FDA drug approvals and adverse events, CDC Wonder mortality, CMS Open Payments, ClinicalTrials.gov, RxNorm drug codes, and WHO GHO global health indicators.
health.*
🎓
Education (NCES)
24 datasets — IPEDS college finance and outcomes, Common Core K-12 school statistics, CRDC civil rights data, NAEP assessments, and College Scorecard.
edu.*
🚨
Crime (FBI / BJS)
17 datasets — FBI UCR and NIBRS offense and arrest data by agency and state, plus BJS victimization surveys. Property crime, violent crime, and more.
crime.*
🗺️
Geographic Boundaries
37 datasets — Census TIGER/Line boundaries, FIPS codes, HUD crosswalks, and USGS place names for states, counties, tracts, ZCTAs, places, and CBSAs.
geo.*
🌲
Federal Lands
21 datasets — USFS national forests and timber sales, NPS units, BLM field offices, forest inventory, and ONRR mineral and energy revenues.
lands.*
💡
Patents (USPTO)
17 datasets — US patent and trademark filings, grants, citations, claims, inventors, assignees, and county-level patent activity from the USPTO bulk data archive.
patents.*
📉
CFTC Derivatives
8 datasets — swap trade repository data, commitments of traders, large trader positions, and cleared derivatives from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
cftc.*
📋
Reference Tables
19 datasets — GLEIF legal entity identifiers and ownership relationships, FIGI instrument codes, SEC company tickers, NAICS/SIC codes and vintages, countries, currencies, and fiscal/holiday calendars for joining across schemas.
ref.*
🔤
Econ Reference
7 datasets — BLS area, industry, and occupation classification tables plus NIPA accounts and Federal Reserve series codes for joining with economic data.
econ_reference.*
🚜
Agriculture (USDA)
8 datasets — USDA NASS crop production and livestock inventory, ERS farm income and wealth, RMA crop-insurance experience, FSA commodity payments, and FAOSTAT global production. County and state level.
ag.*
🌀
Disasters (FEMA / NOAA / NIFC)
11 datasets — FEMA disaster declarations, Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation grants, NFIP flood-insurance policies and paid claims, NOAA storm events, and NIFC wildfire perimeters. Each row is a bounded incident with a date and damage.
disasters.*
🌎
Environment (EPA / USGS)
19 datasets — EPA air quality (AQS), toxics and greenhouse-gas emissions (TRI, GHGRP), USGS streamflow and water sites, EPA drinking-water systems (SDWIS), Superfund and RCRA sites, and facility compliance (ECHO/FRS).
environment.*
🏘️
Housing (FHFA / HUD / CFPB)
18 datasets — FHFA house price indexes, Census new-residential building permits, HUD Fair Market Rents and income limits, CFPB HMDA mortgage data, opportunity zones, and HUD subsidized housing. By state, county, and CBSA.
housing.*
💳
Banking (FDIC / CFPB)
8 datasets — FDIC BankFind institutions, branch locations, structure-change history, failures, Summary of Deposits, call-report financials, and industry summaries, plus CFPB consumer complaints on checking, mortgage, credit card, and debt collection.
banking.*
🚗
Transportation (DOT / NTSB)
19 datasets — NHTSA vehicle recalls, complaints, and FARS fatal crashes, BTS airline on-time and T-100 traffic, FAA aircraft registry, FTA transit ridership, FHWA vehicle registrations, FMCSA carriers, and NTSB aviation accidents.
transport.*
💵
Federal Fiscal (IRS / USAspending)
17 datasets — IRS Statistics of Income by ZIP and county, county-to-county migration, tax-exempt org financials, USAspending obligations by agency and state, SBA 7(a)/504 loan approvals, and SSA benefits by geography.
fiscal.*
🔬
Research & Development (NSF)
4 datasets — NSF NCSES national R&D expenditure by sector and funding source, federal R&D obligations by agency, and Higher Education R&D (HERD) by institution, field, and funding source.
research.*
🏛️
Elected & Appointed Officials
6 datasets — every House and Senate member (Congress.gov), Senate PAS nominations, every Article III federal judge, electoral college votes, and presidential election results. Sourced exclusively from official systems of record.
officials.*

Good prompting has a ceiling.
This is what's above it.

Point a well-prompted model at a source it can reach, and it will pull real numbers and run real statistics — that part isn't in dispute anymore. What it won't do on its own: get past a bulk file with no API, a login wall, or a CAPTCHA gate that blocks the data outright; resolve the same organization or person across an SEC filing, an FEC contribution, and a USPTO patent without you doing that identity work by hand; or run an actual similarity search over filing text or patent claims — it'll try, but there's no index for it to search, scoped to one source or five. None of that is a prompting problem — it's a ceiling, and it's there no matter how good the researcher asking is.

A real run, not a mockup — same question, two answers
General assistant — well-prompted, asked to research
Have incomes grown more in Republican- or Democrat-represented states over the last ten years?
→ found a think-tank study: Red states' aggregate income up ~25–40% faster, driven by migration
→ found a Brookings study: Blue districts' median household income up, Red districts' flat — different decade, different unit
→ "no single, uncontested statistic... genuinely contested and highly sensitive to methodology"
Real research, honestly reported. But it's three other people's numbers, on three different definitions of the question — never the one actually asked.
AskAmerica
Have incomes grown more in Republican- or Democrat-represented states over the last ten years?
$ ask "real median HH income growth, R-lean vs D-lean states, 2014–2024"
→ census.acs1_income × officials.state_political_index, CPI-adjusted via econ.inflation_metrics
→ +12.5% (R-lean, n=27) vs +14.1% (D-lean, n=23) — Welch's t-test p=0.45, not distinguishable from zero
→ confirmed on a continuous score (p=0.79) and a cost-of-living-adjusted rerun (p=0.94) — both null
One regression, on the actual metric asked about, with the robustness checks shown. The honest answer, for either side rooting for a gap: there isn't one.

From an internal side-by-side evaluation, 2026-08-23 — four personas on one question, scored by an independent judge, who ranked this run's AskAmerica answer first: "the most rigorous single answer... all converging on the same null."

§
Gets past the wall a browser can't
Bulk files with no API, login portals, CAPTCHA gates, formats that shift every vintage — resolved once during ingest, so a prompt never has to rediscover the workaround, or discover there isn't one.
Resolves entities across domains
Go looking for complaints about Apple's credit card and you're actually looking for Goldman Sachs Bank USA — the card's real issuer, and the entity CFPB fined separately from Apple for the same program. Nothing about the word "Apple" points there; a model has to already happen to know it. Same problem one level up: "every Apple Inc. subsidiary across SEC, USPTO, and trading data" — entities get renamed and refiled under their own names across every system that touches them. resolve_entity and entity_relationships walk that chain instead of guessing it.
A similarity search that actually exists
A model's own training gets it partway — it likely already has a decent list of, say, big tech companies baked in. Past that, it falls back to SEC's or USPTO's own full-text search and hand-crafts a keyword string that approximates what you meant, then does it again for the next corpus — real tools, but keyword-only, unranked, and each guess about what the underlying text says stacked on the last one. semantic_search is one real similarity index, ranked by meaning, across five corpora in a single call — not a guess re-guessed.
Keeps descending on the fifth "why"
Round three of a general model's "why" usually needs a source it can't fetch or an entity it can't tie together, so it restates itself. Here, the next "why" just changes which table gets queried.

Everyone walking into that meeting already ran the obvious prompt the night before — same summary, same three bullet points. Be the person who brings the number nobody else in the room has, with a query behind it that holds up when someone asks where it came from.


Not a chatbot with a database.
A toolkit built for this.

None of this is the model improvising. It's a fixed set of tools, purpose-built for the data, that the model calls the way it calls anything else — so the hard part happened at build time, not at answer time.

The graph, not just the tables
490+ datasets, already cross-linked by entity, geography, and time. The relationships are pre-built — a query joins across agencies without the model having to figure out how they connect first.
Standard tools. Used the way an analyst would.
Regression, difference-in-differences, panel fixed effects, event studies, double-ML treatment effects — none of this is exotic; it's in every stats package. Having the tool was never the hard part. Piping the right data into it, specified the right way, checked with the right robustness test — that's the twenty-years-of-craft part, and it's enforced at call time, not hoped for.
ols_regression iv_2sls diff_in_diff panel_fixed_effects event_study sensitivity_analysis double_ml_ate
Entity resolution and semantic search, as tools
resolve_entity ties a plain-language name to one canonical identity — LEI, CIK, FEC committee ID, patent assignee, and eighteen more source keys, each confidence-scored. entity_relationships walks the real GLEIF ownership chain, not the misleading single-hop shortcut. semantic_search finds meaning, not keywords, across filings, rules, and threat intel.
resolve_entity entity_relationships semantic_search
A vast recipe library of best practices
find_recipe surfaces the documented best practice before a query runs — cost-of-living vs. inflation adjustment, ambiguous category drift, FBI crime-reporting coverage gaps, and hundreds more traps across the corpus. Not hypothetical guidance: every entry exists because an independent judge caught a real analyst — human or model — getting exactly that wrong.
find_recipe
A report that lays it out for you
The output isn't a chat log to go re-assemble yourself. render_chart and compose_dashboard build the figures, publish_report lays out the finished page — methodology, caveats, sources, and all — into something you hand to someone, not a transcript they have to reconstruct.
render_chart compose_dashboard publish_report

Could you build this yourself? Sure — it's software, and given enough time and headcount, anything is buildable. The harder question: are you a software engineer? Are you also a data analyst who's spent twenty years learning exactly where government data lies to you? Most people are one or the other. This took both, for years, before the first query ever ran.


Zero infrastructure.
Nothing to host.

AskAmerica handles ingestion, formatting, and serving. You get a key, connect a client, and query — three steps, no data to deploy or maintain.

01 —
Get a free API key
Enter your email below. Receive a 6-digit code. No password, no credit card.
02 —
Connect a client
Install once and point it at your key — same key, same data across every client. Pick yours in Download & connect below.
03 —
Ask in plain English — or SQL
In Claude Desktop, just ask; it writes and runs the SQL for you. From Python or JDBC, query directly. Standard SQL across all 420+ datasets.

Free in preview.
Just tell us what you find.

AskAmerica is in preview while we finish filling out data coverage. Every dataset is included, on the free tier, for everyone — the only thing we ask in return is your feedback. Paid plans below open up once preview ends.

After preview
Starter
$19/mo
50 GB / month
  • Everything in Free
  • 50× more data per month
  • Email support
  • Usage dashboard
Available after preview
After preview
Pro
$99/mo
500 GB / month
  • Everything in Starter
  • 500 GB monthly quota
  • Priority support
  • Early access to new datasets
Available after preview

Get started.
Your way.

Same data, same API key — choose the client that fits your workflow.

Recommended

Native installer

Bundled JRE — no Java, no Python, no config files. Open the app, enter your API key, click Configure. Works with Claude Desktop and any other MCP-compatible client.

Or via pip: pip install 'askamerica[mcp]' then askamerica mcp-config.

Claude Desktop gains these tools
list_schemas    → what datasets are available?
list_tables     → what tables are in fec?
describe_table  → what columns does contributions have?
query           → run any SQL and return results

Claude calls these automatically — you just ask questions in plain English. No SQL required on your end.

Developer

pip install

One package, zero boilerplate. Returns a pandas DataFrame or a raw JDBC connection — JPype is managed internally, never exposed.

setup
pip install 'askamerica[engine]'
askamerica login            # set your API key

Python 3.8+. The engine JAR downloads automatically on first query (cached under ~/.askamerica). On Python 3.10+ a JVM is bundled too; on 3.8–3.9, Java 11+ must be on your PATH.

one-liner → DataFrame
import askamerica as aa

df = aa.query("""
  SELECT company_name, value_dollars
  FROM sec.financial_facts
  WHERE canonical_name = 'Revenue'
  ORDER BY value_dollars DESC
  FETCH FIRST 10 ROWS ONLY
""")
print(df)
raw JDBC connection
conn = aa.connect()
rs = conn.createStatement().executeQuery(
    "SELECT cik, company_name FROM sec.filing_metadata"
    " ORDER BY filing_date DESC FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY")
while rs.next():
    print(rs.getString("company_name"))
conn.close()
Any language

Raw JAR

A single fat JAR — use from Node, Go, Java, DBeaver, or any JDBC client. No other dependencies.

↓ askamerica-engine.jar
DBeaver connection settings
JDBC URL:     jdbc:askamerica:source=geo,sec
Driver JAR:   askamerica-engine.jar
Driver class: org.apache.calcite.adapter
              .askamerica.AskAmericaDriver
Username:     (leave blank)
const { createConnection } = require('jdbc');
const conn = await createConnection({
  url: 'jdbc:askamerica:source=sec,geo',
  drivername: 'org.apache.calcite.adapter
    .askamerica.AskAmericaDriver',
  classpath: ['./askamerica-engine.jar']
});
const rows = await conn.query(
  'SELECT cik, company_name FROM sec.filing_metadata FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY');
// go-jdbc wraps the JVM via CGo
db, _ := sql.Open("jdbc",
  "jdbc:askamerica:source=sec,geo")
rows, _ := db.Query(
  "SELECT cik, company_name FROM sec.filing_metadata FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY")
AskAmericaDriver driver = new AskAmericaDriver();
Connection conn = driver.connect(
    "jdbc:askamerica:source=sec,geo,econ",
    new Properties());
ResultSet rs = conn.createStatement().executeQuery(
    "SELECT cik, company_name FROM sec.filing_metadata FETCH FIRST 5 ROWS ONLY");
Catch it before you share it

Fact-check any page, in one click.

A politician says renewable energy is driving up your utility bill. A headline says a new policy caused a crime wave. Instead of taking it on faith, click the AskAmerica icon in your toolbar. It pulls apart every checkable claim on the page and tests each one against government data — census, energy, crime, health, hundreds more datasets — then hands back a verdict: true, false, partially true, or not checkable, with the actual numbers and sources behind each call. No more "sounds right" — an actual answer, in about the time it takes to read the headline.

🧩
Download extension
.zip · unpacked install

Chrome/Edge/Brave: unzip, open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked, select the unzipped folder.

how it works
1. You're on a page with a claim worth checking
2. Click the AskAmerica toolbar icon
3. "Validate with AskAmerica" opens your own Claude
   session — no API call from the extension itself
4. It tests every claim against real government data
   and publishes a report: verdict, evidence, sources
5. Back on the page, each claim is highlighted by
   verdict — green true, red false, amber partial —
   with the full breakdown one click away

Runs on your existing Claude Desktop or claude.ai plan — not a separate API key, and the extension itself never talks to a model. Requires the AskAmerica MCP engine running locally (see the MCP tab) to read and publish reports.


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