Singapore government data APIs: LTA DataMall, OneMap and data.gov.sg in one guide

In this guide:

• Which Singapore data API do you need?
• LTA DataMall: how to get an API key and what it covers
• OneMap API: which endpoints need a token
• data.gov.sg API: keys and rate limits
• What the licence lets a business do
• A no-code route: the Singapore MCP
• What businesses build on this data
• Common mistakes

Which Singapore government data API do you need?

Pick by the question: anything moving on the roads or public transport is LTA DataMall, where a place is or how to get there is OneMap, and almost everything else the government publishes, from HDB resale prices to the two-hour forecast, is data.gov.sg. As documented on 16 October 2026:

LTA DataMall: how do you get an API key, and what does it cover?

LTA DataMall is the Land Transport Authority's open data portal, and its live data needs a free Account Key. On the DataMall site, use Request for API Access and fill in the form. LTA says its dynamic datasets are updated live and served through APIs that need an Account Key, issued only to registered subscribers.

Every call carries the key in a request header named AccountKey, not in the URL. The dynamic datasets most businesses use are:

• Bus arrival at a given stop, by service, plus bus services, routes and stops.
• Taxi availability and carpark availability at participating HDB, LTA and URA carparks.
• Traffic incidents (accidents, breakdowns, road blocks, diversions) and traffic images.
• Train service alerts for disruptions on the rail network.

Two rules from the API User Guide: most APIs return at most 500 records per call, so a full list (every bus stop, every carpark) needs paging with $skip=500, $skip=1000 and so on, bus arrival being the exception; and slow-moving files such as station codes and exits are static downloads, refreshed now and then.

Using DataMall's datasets and APIs means accepting the Singapore Open Data Licence and LTA's Terms of Service for API and SDK. We found no published per-minute limit, so cache what does not change and poll no faster than the data moves.

How do you use the OneMap API, and which endpoints need a token?

OneMap is the Singapore Land Authority's national map, and its API needs a token for every endpoint except basemaps and the static map, according to SLA's own OneMap API workshop material (August 2025). That includes search.

1. Register an account on the OneMap API portal with your email address and confirm it from the email OneMap sends.
2. Request a token by posting your registered email and password to the token endpoint described in the docs.
3. Send the token in the Authorization header of each call.
4. Renew it: a token is valid for 3 days and does not renew itself, so a long-running service needs to fetch a new one before it expires.

The endpoints most businesses need are search (an address, building or postal code to coordinates), reverse geocode (coordinates to an address) and routing (walking, driving, cycling and public transport). The docs also publish a call rate limit, so build in back-off rather than geocoding a whole customer list in one burst.

The OneMap API Terms of Service allow use "whether commercially or non-commercially", subject to any limits on each API's own page. If you display OneMap basemaps, OneMap requires its logo and attribution on the map.

Does the data.gov.sg API need a key, and what are the rate limits?

No key is required to call data.gov.sg, but production use should have one: the dataset pages say "Adding an API key gives you higher rate limits and priority support", and the API specification lists the x-api-key header as optional. To get a key, log in on data.gov.sg with your email and a one-time password, choose Create API Key, and pick a developer key (testing, lower limits) or a production key (operational use, higher limits), as the developer guide describes.

The published rate limits are counted per 10-second window, and a call over the limit gets HTTP 429 (Too many requests). Enforcement started on 31 December 2025.

The real-time environment APIs cover the 2-hour, 24-hour and 4-day forecasts, rainfall, air temperature, humidity, wind, the UV index, PSI and PM2.5. The NEA 2-hour forecast updates every 30 minutes and takes a date filter for past readings. Everything else is a dataset you query by ID: HDB resale transactions, schools, childcare centres, company registrations and many more.

What does the Singapore Open Data Licence let a business do?

Quite a lot. The Singapore Open Data Licence (version 1.0), which covers data.gov.sg datasets and which LTA DataMall users also accept, grants a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence" to use, copy, adapt and redistribute the data, "whether commercially or non-commercially". Three conditions matter in practice:

• Attribution. A product that uses the data must carry a conspicuous notice naming the source and linking to the licence. The licence gives a template: "Contains information from {name of dataset} accessed on {date of access of dataset} from {source of data} which is made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0 {URL link to licence}".
• No implied endorsement. You must not suggest official status or that an agency endorses you.
• No rights over personal data inside a dataset.

The API terms of service add the operational side: keep credentials confidential, do not disrupt the service, and expect the APIs "as is" and "as available", with no promised service levels. Plan for an outage. This is a summary, not legal advice; the licence and terms themselves govern.

Is there a no-code way to use these APIs?

Yes. Olano's Singapore MCP is an open-source MCP server that puts data.gov.sg, OneMap, LTA DataMall and SingStat behind 291 read-only tools an AI assistant can call: you ask in plain English, and the answer keeps its source agency, dataset and observation period. It ships with 8 Agent Skills and 7 Claude Code plugins, is MIT-licensed and free, and its source is on GitHub. It is an independent community project, not affiliated with the Singapore Government.

It is mostly keyless, but the upstream rules still apply: an LTA DataMall Account Key for live bus, traffic, carpark and taxi feeds, a OneMap token for authenticated address and routing lookups, and an optional data.gov.sg key for production limits. The server starts without any of them, and only the tools that need one say so. To try it with nothing installed, message @OlanoSGBot on Telegram or the Olano AI WhatsApp number +65 8905 1632; both are hosted by Olano.

Three questions we ran

We ran these through the Singapore MCP on our own machine, with no keys configured, on 16 October 2026 at 19:59 UTC (03:59 on 17 October, Singapore time).

• "Which MRT stations are nearest to 1.2834, 103.8513?" Raffles Place (EW14, NS26) at 36 m, Telok Ayer (DT18) at 347 m and Downtown (DT17) at 458 m, as straight-line distance to the average of each station's exits. It cited LTA's Train Station Exit Point dataset (data from August 2025) and added: "Use a routing service for walking distance, accessibility, or travel time."
• "When is the next bus at stop 01012?" The tool declined and said why: "Missing required environment variable LTA_DATAMALL_API_KEY. Request an Account Key from LTA DataMall." Live bus arrivals need the DataMall key; the Singapore MCP page lists this question among those that work on the hosted bots.
• "Find 1 Fullerton Road." A clear refusal: OneMap search needs a token, as SLA's documentation says.

The refusals are the useful part for a developer: a tool that cannot reach its source says so instead of guessing an answer.

Common mistakes

• Hard-coding a OneMap token. It expires after 3 days. Fetch a new one on a schedule, or when a call reports an expired token.
• Reading only the first page. A DataMall list that stops at exactly 500 records is almost always truncated. Keep paging with $skip.
• Putting keys in browser code. The terms ask you to keep credentials confidential. Call the APIs from a server.
• Polling faster than the data changes. The 2-hour forecast moves every 30 minutes; asking every few seconds only spends your rate limit and earns 429s.
• Forgetting attribution. The licence requires a visible source notice and a link to it, in your product, not just in your code.

How Olano helps

Olano is a Singapore AI studio, and we build agents that answer customers and run operations on this kind of data: on WhatsApp, Telegram and the other channels your team uses, inside your own deployment, with human approval on anything outbound. The Singapore MCP is added to an Olano deployment like any other MCP server, which is how our own demo bots answer, and the agent's approval rules and spending limits apply to it unchanged.

A typical engagement joins public data to yours: delivery addresses to OneMap, outlets to bus stops and carparks, listings to resale prices and MRT exits. See our services, what AI agents in Singapore take on, and standing market research briefs. We never present a snapshot as live or hide which agency a number came from.